


oh, darling.

by luna_e_stelle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt Peter, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Poor Peter, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Torture, it happened and i rolled with it, tiny reference to greek mythology lol, tony's a mess lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-03-07 22:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18882223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna_e_stelle/pseuds/luna_e_stelle
Summary: "Peter?" Tony’s voice wavered with an urgency that cut through the thick haze in Peter’s mind.There was so much emotion in that one word that Peter wondered how he had ever doubted that Tony loved him. They had never said it out loud, just showed it in a way that spoke louder than words ever could.--Peter is taken, and he tries to find his way back home.





	1. believe me when i tell you (i'll never do you no harm)

 

He counted to twelve before his vision turned blurred and shaking, before his legs collapsed beneath him and he could feel hands pulling him, grabbing his limbs.

" _Karen,_ " he gasped, hands grasping against the asphalt, trying to find something, anything to stop the man from dragging him away. "Karen, call Tony — call him, _please_ , please just —"

Peter’s mask was ripped off of his head, thrown away carelessly. He looked down at Peter and met his eyes. They were glazed yet thoughtful, crinkling with what seemed like affection.

"You’re perfect," the man mumbled, and fear ran through Peter; sharp and electric and completely all-consuming.

The needle had gone straight through his suit, and now there was cold liquid coursing through his bloodstream. He knew he couldn’t shut his eyes, that it would be the difference between life and death.

His eyelids fluttered shut; darkness surrounded him, and he floated.

A car, a trunk, his wrist tied together. A throbbing knot in his head, cold leaking into his skin and snapping his bones, a sense of doom so terrifying that it was woven into his very soul. Freezing hands caressed his face, down his neck. A gaze was on him, pricking like the needle.

He knew nothing of Tony, looking at the blood on the ground with fear running through him; sharp and electric and completely all-consuming. Peter was already gone.

 

—

 

He couldn’t think, not as his lungs stuttered in his chest and he gasped for air. Something was wrapped around him, choking him, killing him, coiling around his lungs and squeezing. He couldn’t move, limbs like water, too weak, too much panic scratching and shredding, ripping his insides to pieces.

Peter fell onto a timber floor, wrapped tight in a blanket, breathing too fast. He blinked, took a breath in. He was alive. Alive was good.

The floor beneath him was worn down, and a draft of icy air blew up through the gaps in it. The blanket he was wrapped in was woollen and slightly scratchy. His heart thudded, his fingers tracing over the spot the needle had been pressed into. Peter pushed himself up.

Once, he had gotten really sick. Pneumonia. May and Ben had to take him to the ER. It was a blur, mostly; a haze of sickness and fading memory making it hard to remember. He remembered the weakness in his muscles, though, and the fog in his brain and the ache in his chest. He felt like that now.

Peter leant back against the metal bed frame. The room was old, yet well kept. The white-washed walls were fading yellow with age and cracks shivered through the roof. They were minuscule, like a spider’s web.

When he tried to stand, his legs couldn’t hold him up; he fell back onto the bed and it creaked, loudly. There was a small, potted plant in the far corner of the room, a wooden dresser pushed up against the wall, and two doors — one that hung ajar — but no windows. Peter made himself stand again, holding the blanket tight around his shoulders. His suit was gone.

He traced his shaking hand along the crumbling doorframe and peered through it. A clawfoot bath was rusting in the corner, a porcelain sink and a toilet and a medicine cabinet with a perfectly clean mirror. There was a graze on his forehead, and his eyes looked glassy. He darted his gaze away, slowly walked back into the other room.

The other door was shut, with a round, golden handle that was scratched and rusting. When he tugged it slowly, tried to pulled it open, the hinges creaked and a chain lock kept it from opening anymore. Peter closed it silently and sunk onto the old bed, trembling.

His head swam, his brain mushy, his limbs weak. He pulled the blanket tighter around him, swallowed and breathed through the sharp panic making his lungs stutter. The scariest thing, maybe, was the dullness of his senses; they were slow and sluggish, as though he were listening and seeing underwater. He didn’t feel like Spider-Man, and he hadn’t felt so _weak_ since before the bite.

It was definitely remembering the sharp stab of the needle that sent him spiralling. The cool flow of drugs running through his bloodstream stopped him from breathing, he couldn’t think or move, couldn’t see past the peeling paint that was trapping him. There were no windows, no air, _nothing_ , just his gasp that couldn’t fill his chest, the terror slipping through his bones.

He wanted out, he wanted the sun on his skin and May’s soft hands cupping his face, Tony throwing an arm around his shoulder and laughing too loudly and making him roll his eyes.

Peter sucked in a breath. Counted to three. Let it out. Repeated, again and again and again.

May wasn’t with him, neither was Tony. He was Spider-Man, even if he didn’t feel like it.

He rubbed his eyes before opening them, surveyed the room again. A clock was sitting on the dresser by the wall. It was old fashion, with the second hand ticking.

Surprise flickered in him. He should have been able to hear it, and he held his breath, until the room went still and his heart beat against his sternum and the ticking finally reached his ears. Whatever he had been given, it was leaving him vulnerable. He wasn’t deaf or blind, but having his heightened senses taken away made him feel exposed.

He curled into himself, suddenly so much more aware of the cold air nipping at his bare skin.

A thought struck him, making hope blossom in his chest. If whoever kidnapped him still had the suit, Tony would be tracking it. Tony would find him. He just had to wait.

There was a rattle from outside of the windowless room. A metal chain clinking, and then hinges were creaking and the door slowly opened. There was a knot in his stomach, his muscles were tensed.

The man that walked in had balding, blonde hair. It looked gelled back. He had light skin and a medium frame and was wearing a dress shirt with black trousers. He held a pile of clothes in his hands, and shut the door. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw Peter, sitting perfectly still and tense and ready to fight.

"You’re up!" He exclaimed, straight, white teeth showing when he smiled. He had crows feet around his eyes, and he walked to the dresser and put the clothes on it. Peter didn’t take his eyes off him. "I thought you’d be out for a few more hours."

"What do you want?" Peter’s voice was rasping, and it grated against his throat.

The man smiled again, gently, looking back at Peter with something he was too scared to figure out. "I’ll tell you soon enough. You should rest."

"Who are you?" Peter forced himself to stand as he moved closer. The room spun and he fell back against the wall, blanket around him.

"My name is David," he said simply. His eyes trailed up and down, he stood barely a meter away, and Peter wrapped his arms across himself tighter.

The man’s eyes burned every inch of skin they looked upon. Peter wanted to shrink, to curl into himself and hide. He clenched his jaw, though, and stared right back at the piercing, icy blue gaze.

"I hope you’ll be happy here with me, Peter." He spoke compassionately, truthfully, like Peter was nothing more than a guest.

"I can promise that I won’t be," he said, and he hated how croaky his voice was.

The man tilted his head, a small smile on his cracked lips. When he walked to the door, he paused in the doorway, looking back. And then he left without a word.

 

—

 

**DAVID TAYLOR**

Wanted for the abduction of PETER B. PARKER

Date of Birth: 11/03/1970

Ht.:5 ft., 10 in.      Wt.: 158 Lbs

Hair:Light blond    Eyes:Blue      Complexion:  Fair

Scars, etc.:Balding, scar from left elbow to bottom of left wrist

Occupation:Unemployed

Car:[REDACTED, recently found & abandoned]

 

**PETER B. PARKER**

Date of Birth: 08/10/2001

Age: 16

Ht.:5 ft, 8 in.      Wt.:126 Lbs

Hair:Brown         Eyes:Brown      Complexion:  Light

Scars, etc.:[none noted]

Hobbies, sports, etc.:Known to frequently walk in surrounding areas of Queens, at varying times of night and day. Frequents public libraries and coffee houses.

Details of Abduction-Date, Place:Video evidence confirms the abduction taking place on the 03/19/2019.

 

_A large reward will personally be given by Anthony E. Stark if any information is presented._

 

Of course, special agents had been called in for the case. Peter Parker’s secret identity remained hidden, as did the video of his abduction once it had been confirmed by an agent sworn to secrecy. The mask and the suit of Spider-Man had been found at the scene of the abduction, and were secure in Tony Stark’s lab. He had a lot of pull, and the officers and the investigators and the agents didn’t argue as he read over their work.

The note that Tony had discovered had already been tested for traces of DNA. It was Taylor’s, and the words on it sent trembles down his steady hands.

 _Stop looking_ , it had said. _He’s mine._

With so much information regarding the accused, it should have been a simple case. As the hours ticked by, though, Peter Parker seemed to slip through their fingers.

 

—

 

The next time that the man — David — came in, he was holding a plate with a sandwich on it and a glass of juice. Peter was wearing the jeans and t-shirt that had been left, but David’s pale eyes seemed to look right through him, look at him up and down, affectionate and glazed and _wrong_. It made Peter’s skin shiver and his cramping stomach clench.

David moved closer, and Peter stood again, back against the wall so he didn’t fall. The plate and the cup was carefully placed on the bed.

"You don’t need to be scared of me, Peter," he softly uttered, just inches away.

Peter looked into his eyes, icy blue, startling and hungry against his gaunt, waxy complexion, and felt fear bubble beneath his skin. "I’m not scared," he said anyway, clenching his jaw.

The man knew better, smiling again like Peter was a work of art. He traced a finger down his jaw and Peter flinched away, his sixth-sense ringing even through the haze of drugs running through his blood.

"Get _off_ ," he snapped, but his legs almost collapsed and he had to catch himself, had to press further into the cold, peeling wall.

"You’re stubborn," David said. "He was too."

"Who?" It slipped from his mouth before he could stop himself.

David just shook his head and stepped back and motioned to the food. "Eat. I’ll explain everything in time, Pete."

" _Don’t_ call me that." The way that the name fell from his tongue was _wrong_ , and it made shivers run down his spine, made disgust curl in his gut. "And why don’t you just explain what you want from me now? Make it easier on everyone."

David’s eyes hardened. "Watch yourself, _Pete_. You’re not allowed to demand anything."

"Dude, you kidnapped me." His head was throbbing and his muscles were weak and his senses were completely clogged, but the same stupid stubbornness clung to him. He wasn’t about to let it go. "I think I should at least know why."

The man gritted his teeth, took a deep breath in. Blood was slowly spreading to his face, turning it red. Anger issues, then, Peter thought as he raised his eyebrows.

"Listen to me when I tell you what to do," he said tersely.

Peter scoffed. "No, thanks."

"It wasn’t a suggestion," he barked, stepping forward.

Something tingled at the back of Peter’s neck and he tensed, but he rolled his eyes, too. It was easier, he realised, to just ignore the deep-set panic in his chest. He was Spider-Man. He had dealt with worse, and he could deal with one _hopefully_ regular crazy person. "Look, I don’t know what your deal is, but I think it’d be better for both of us if you just — I don’t know — let me go."

The drugs were messing with his system, but Peter still knew how to fight, and he didn’t need his spider-sense to see the flinch that ran through the man, the arm that shot up to hit him. Peter blocked it and pushed him away before he could think.

David didn’t slam back into the wall like he should have. He just stumbled back a few paces. There was anger in his face, though; the lines on his forehead twisted together and his cheeks turned bright red. This time, Peter’s limbs were too tangled and heavy to react, and his head exploded in a bright, white pain and he fell to the floor.

Everything swirled, foggy and laggy, when he blinked. Cold air gently drifted up from the cracks in the wooden floorboards. His heart thudded, right up against his ribs.

There were fingers, now, stubby and too harsh, trying to turn his head up and trace over the blood dripping from his cheekbone. "You can’t talk back," a voice said, affectionate, gentle. "I won’t have to hurt you if you listen, okay?"

A groan rose up in his throat, and he let his eyes flutter shut. He tried to imagine it was just Tony, patching him up after a rough patrol or trying to calm him down before a presentation.

The fingers were too rough, though, too possessive, as if the man was acting, trying to remember how to be gentle. He looked up at him, and could see it; there was something in his eyes that was unhinged, something dangerous. He wasn’t superhuman, wasn’t an evil mastermind or a terrorist or an alien trying to overthrow the government, but just a crazy man who had somehow found a way to keep Peter at bay. It was more scary, somehow, that it was just a man. Normal humans could, sometimes, be worse.

"You’re going to be perfect," he muttered, more to himself, and Peter found the strength to pull away. "Just like he was."

It was the second time that David had compared Peter to someone else, and he took note, tucked it away for later. Peter pushed himself up against the wall, glaring.

David didn’t say anything as he move the plate and cup to the floor, didn’t say anything as he walked out of the room, glancing back for a second. The lock clicked shut.

He let himself breathe for a few minutes. Whatever was running through his blood was wearing off. It was quieter than it should have been, but he could hear the clock on the dresser. The soft tingling on his neck was more prominent, warning a constant danger. Peter turned slightly against the wall, biting his lip, and he put his fingertips against it. When he slowly pulled away, they stuck.

Relief ran through him, like a cool trickle of water. The thought of loosing his powers, permanently, was something that completely terrified him. They were a part of him, part of his DNA and his life and _everything_. He couldn’t help people if he didn’t have them, couldn’t feel the utter freedom of swinging through the air, fearlessly. A small part of him sometimes wondered if Tony would bother with him if he lost his powers.

But then he remembered curling up in the compound and staying up until sunrise, marathoning movies or working in the lab, going out for coffee and laughing at stupid jokes and the warm smile that Tony seemed to reserve for just him.

Peter was going to get out. He had to. He just needed a plan, needed to figure out what exactly was going on.

He rubbed the bruise forming on his cheek, wincing.

"How the hell do I get _into_ crap like this?" He wondered aloud.

His stomach cramped and he wrapped his arms around himself. He knew he had to eat, a lot, because of his metabolism, and he wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had eaten, let alone been taken. The sandwich was looking more appetising. Peter picked it up carefully, pulled apart the layers, checking for anything out of place. He took a hesitant bite.

It was fine — good, even, and his body seemed to decide that he was eating it whether he liked it or not. He took another bite. It would give him energy, would maybe clear his head.

The door was only locked with a chain. He knew he could easily break it down normally, or at least break the chain off. Hopefully David wouldn’t give him anymore of the drug before it had worn off enough.

Half of it was gone when the sweetness filled his nose. He looked down, at the seemingly innocent bread, breathed in something sickly sweet and apparently tasteless. The room was already spinning, whirling in and out, and he scrambled up.

"Shit," he hissed, tugging a hand through his hair.

The was a unique kind of panic that jolted through him, and he leant over the ageing porcelain sink and shoved his fingers down his throat.

Peter’s stomach spasmed, chest shuddering. Tears stung behind his eyes, his heartbeat suddenly so much more prominent. He gagged around his fingers and coughed.

He sucked in a shaky breath. It was siting in his stomach, he could feel it, could feel the edges of his vision turning hazy and the strength that had slowly been climbing back disappearing.

It wasn’t like the movies; it was gross and it hurt and his heart felt fluttery and wrong as he heaved for air afterwards. He tipped the juice into the sink, rinsed his mouth out with water and flushed the rest of the sandwich, ignoring the lingering taste of sick and sweetness and acid.

If he could trick David that he was eating — that he was drugged — then maybe he could catch him by surprise. He could find a way out, or at least grab a phone and get Tony.

A wave of loneliness rolled through him. Peter sat back onto the creaky bed and put his forehead on his knee and waited.

 

—

 

"Forty-eight hours ago, a Stark Industries intern named Peter Parker was abducted by a man identified as David Taylor." The video showed a Federal agent standing in front of a lectern. Both Tony Stark and a pretty, middle-aged woman stood to his right, their faces blunt and unreadable. "He was ambushed in a carpark and forcefully drugged, and then taken."

The woman glanced up at Stark briefly, before clasping her hands together.

"No motive has been concluded, and no contact has been made with the accused or Mister Parker," the agent said. "We’re asking for any information or witnesses regarding both the accused or Parker, and also calling for David Taylor to make contact with us."

Then there were questions, tumbling through the air.

"Do you know if the boy’s been hurt?" A reporter asked off-screen.

The agent shook his head. "We currently don’t have that information, but we are treating this case with the strong belief that he is endangered."

"Are you willing to pay ransom?"

"We’ll deal with that if the reasoning for this kidnapping is ransom," he said. "And Mister Stark is willing to pay a large reward for any information given."

"What do you think the motive is, Mister Stark?"

The camera lens focused on Stark, and he straightened, looked to where the off-screen reporter would be standing from behind tinted sunglasses. "I can’t say." Something angry and vengeful flickered in his eyes, even from underneath the glasses. "But when I find Peter, the man who dared take him will regret the day he was born."

As noise around the room built and Stark’s hard, unbreakable expression didn’t flicker, his hands shook, ever so slightly.

 

—

 

The dining room was like the rest of the house; old and crumbling, yet meticulously cleaned and up-kept. The wallpaper was faded with age and slowly peeling from the walls, but it had obviously been mended recently. The rug beneath the table was softened and worn-through from years of being walked on, but it looked like it had been vacuumed and cleaned. The windows were boarded up with thick planks of timber.

"I suspected that you were close to Tony Stark." Peter’s eyes snapped up, and he barely dared to breathe. "But, well… I wasn’t even sure that Spider-Man was _you_ until I pulled the mask off. It changed a lot of my plans."

Peter’s fingers gripped around the armrest of his chair. "What — Why did you take me?"

"See, I’d been tracking Spider-Man for months," David said, leaning back and crossing his legs. "And I looked into the internship program, and I had my suspicions. But, Stark made it nearly impossible to find out anything about Peter Parker — very hush-hush."

"Why did you take me?" He asked, more forcefully. Frustration was bubbling away, and he was so sick of not knowing why he had been kidnapped, whether it was a Spider-Man thing or a Tony thing or just bad luck.

"I was planning to capture Spider-Man for a long time." David had that look in his eyes; a mask of affection, hiding something scary and insane, ready to snap at a moments notice. "I wanted to see how he worked, how he got his powers. I tried to find out everything about him, and I saw that you might be connected. And you were everything that I’ve been looking for. I could only hope that my suspicions were right."

Peter swallowed around the sharp feeling in his throat. "Look, as flattering as that is, I think it’d be best for everyone if you just, uh, spare the monolog, maybe?"

The man smiled, tilted his head. "You’ve lost people, Peter. So have I. No child should have to lose his parents, just as no father should have to lose his son."

"You don’t know anything about me," he said, and David stood, shoes echoing dully against the rug until he leant against the table in front of Peter.

His heart thudded.

"I know everything about you." This man was crazy, Peter knew, but his eyes bore through him, made him feel exposed and young and childish. "I lost my son, Peter. You lost your parents. We’ve been brought together for a reason."

"Ah, no," Peter said, inching back in his chair. "You kidnapped me — that’s not what I’d call being _brought together_."

Then the man crouched down in front of him, and he skidded away, almost tipping over. David’s hand rested on his knee, staring at him with too intense eyes and gripping him too hard.

"Tony Stark stands in the way of us," David mumbled, breathless. "I’ve seen the articles, saying that you’re his secret son. You need to tell him that you’re _mine_ — not his."

Plans started forming in Peter’s head, behind his furrowed eyebrows and his thumping heart. "Let me see him. I’ll — I’ll tell him."

With his free hand, David reached into his back pocket and brought out a phone.

"You’re going to tell him to stop looking. You’re going to tell him that you’re mine."

Anticipation kept him completely still, terrified that David would realise that if Peter talked long enough, Tony would track him. Tony could track the phone. He just had to talk. Tony was going to find him.

The phone rang twice — every ring loud in the quiet room, echoing off the walls — before it was picked up.

" _Who are you and why should I care?_ " Tony’s voice was hard and snapping, and something escaped Peter’s throat when he heard it. Loneliness ached in him, and he wanted to close his eyes and wake up in the lab, tools strewn around him and Tony quietly humming an old rock song.

"Mister Stark?"

He could hear Tony suck in a breath. " _Peter._ "

He blinked his stinging eyes, glanced at David, who was staring at him intently, madly, finger hovering over the hang-up button. "Mister Stark, uh… I just —"

" _Where are you? Pete, I need you to tell me where you are,_ " Tony said desperately, and papers were being shuffled and he mumbled something to FRIDAY. Peter shut his eyes. " _Are you hurt?_ "

"I’m not — I’m not hurt," he promised. The grip on his knee tightened. "I just… I need to tell you — you have to… You can’t look for me. You have to stop."

There was silence, before, " _What? I’m not gonna do that._ "

Peter looked into David’s icy eyes. "I know you aren’t. This David guy wants you too, though. Honestly, he’s a bit loopy — has some serious daddy issues."

The phone, when it slammed into the side of his head instead of the fist he was expecting, made everything ring and spin as he hit the ground.

" _Pete, stay on the line, just another —_ "

He could hear David’s heavy breathing as the phone disconnected, harsh and angry. He didn’t stick around, though; Peter scrambled up and stumbled through the wave of dizziness, started racing through the dimly lit hallway.

Every single window was boarded up, and the halls twisted and his eyes blurred. He ran faster, pushed his weak legs more and more.

"Peter!"

His hands clawed at the front door’s locks, his chest heaved, and he wasn’t moving quick enough, couldn’t get his eyes to focus or his arms to listen, could hear stomping footsteps moving closer and closer.

David crashed into him and they fell to the floor. The pain of knuckles on skin was something Peter was used to, but it exploded around him, made blood pool in his mouth and grunts fall from his throat.

There was nothing affectionate in the man as he dragged Peter by his limp arm through the cold, worn down halls. When he was thrown into the bedroom, boots kicked his ribs, and when everything fell silent and Peter was finally alone, a cold draft blew up from the cracks in the hardwood floors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got a tumblr !! -- https://www.tumblr.com/blog/legalassie , so come send in prompts or talk to me or whatever there if you want !
> 
> *also* the title and the chapter names are from the song Oh! Darling by the Beatles, which was basically the whole inspiration for the story lol
> 
> so, thank you guys sm for reading and i hope you enjoy it !


	2. believe me when i beg you (don't ever leave me alone)

"Pete." Peter squeezed his eyes shut tighter, leaned into the hand tracing his jaw. He must have fallen asleep in the lab. Tony was probably trying to take him up to his room. "Petey, we’re here."

A soft groan fell out of his throat. Where were they? He felt so tired, couldn’t remember going anywhere. He knew that even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to move.

"I’m sorry that I hurt you, Pete," Tony said quietly, fingers slowly running down his neck. "But I’ll make it up to you. I promise."

That made Peter’s face scrunch up in confusion. Tony wouldn’t hurt him, but his ribs were throbbing, and his cheek was stinging, and his head was thumping. Maybe something had happened on a mission?

"Mis’er Stark?" He mumbled.

The fingers resting on his jaw tightened, gripping just hard enough to make him try and jerk back. His heavy eyelids snapped open, and it wasn’t Tony; it was pale eyes and a terrifying scowl and the realisation that he was in the trunk of a car.

There was a crushing weight on his chest, knives behind his eyes, something squeezing his throat. He wanted Tony, he wanted Tony, he wanted —

Hands grabbed under his arms, pulled him out of the boot and threw him to the ground. Gravel cut into his skin, his face pressed against it. His mouth tasted like copper and dust.

"I’m _trying_ , Peter," the man said from far above. "Fuck, I’m trying so hard, and you’re not. This _has_ to work."

Peter didn’t want it to work. He didn’t want to try. He wanted Tony.

The man gripped his bicep, tugged him up roughly, and Peter whimpered as he stumbled up on messy, tangled limbs. He watched his feet as he was dragged along; there was a scuff on his right shoe and his laces were undone and his knees kept giving out. The grey gravel changed colour. Instead of crunching underneath him, the ground turned brown and thudded as he walked, and he would have tripped over a step if he wasn’t being held up.

They were on a deck now, he decided, blinking down. His jeans had dust on them, and a tear on the knee.

"We’re alone." The man must have been calming down, because he wasn’t swearing and his hand that was curled around Peter’s arm wasn’t bruising. "We’re far away from everyone. No one can find us."

Maybe that was supposed to be comforting, but it made Peter’s heart thump weirdly, right up against his sternum. A noise fell out of his throat and he tried to pull away, because something was whispering in his mind that he needed to run, and he knew that, and he didn’t want to be far away from everyone. He wanted Tony.

"Shh," the man whispered, and his breath was hot and sticky against his ear. "It’s alright."

Red leaves crunched underneath his feet, until the wooden deck changed into polished hardwood floors.

The couch that the man gently set him on was cool against his skin. Peter slumped back, bonelessly, fingers moving back and forth over the tiny tears in the leather seat, head tilting sideways until it fell onto the armrest. He blinked slowly, heavily, as the man walked back to the door, shut it and locked it and closed the shutters.

"I’ll be right back." The man was standing in front of him suddenly, smoothing his hair back, and Peter looked up. His name was David, he remembered. "I’m just getting your room ready."

David seemed nice, except for when he had thrown him on the gravel. His face still stung, but the cold leather pressing against it was soothing. Memories stirred, like a slow stream of water trickling through his brain.

There was a windowless room, an endless ticking of a clock, possessive fingers tracing his jaw and boots kicking his ribs.

Peter tilted his head slightly and tried to look at the room through hazy eyes.

The walls were dark, oak logs, and the windows were boarded up with planks, holy letting in slithers of golden sunlight. There was an old television; square and thick and an antenna sitting on top of it. There was a small kitchen to his left; dark green linoleum benches and dark wood cabinets to match the walls.

There was a phone. It was off-white and aged, hanging on the wall with a long, spiralling cord.

Peter made himself move. He gripped the coffee table before he could collapse to the floor, forced his legs to stand. He needed to get to the phone, even if he couldn’t quite figure out why. Maybe if he got to the phone he could get Tony.

He put it against his ear, let his fingers press down numbers that seemed to be stored in his subconscious. It took too long for him to realise that the phone was dead, that there was no ringing, when an echo of something pricked at his neck, dull and weak, but warning him all the same.

" _Peter_ ," the voice said from behind him. He spun clumsily, saw David standing in a doorway, running a hand through his hair, sighing. "I — I’m trying so hard to make this work. It — It will work, okay? I know you’re not — thinking straight, right now, but you have to stop. I’m going to hurt you if you don’t."

The cabin that they were in, he realised, was much like the house. It was obviously old, but looked like someone had tried to keep it in good condition. There was a thin layer of dust over everything, though, and tiny particles were floating through the air, just where the sun peaked through the curtains.

"I want Tony." Peter sounded small. His voice was all glazed and croaky and quiet. Childish.

The man clenched his jaw, stormed over before Peter could even jerk back and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and started pulling him down a dark hall with dim lights and closed doors.

He tripped over a doorframe, breathed in musty air and saw a bedroom; a dark, wood dresser and bed, a small, green plant, a gold, ticking clock.

"Sit," David said, pushing him down on a soft and scratchy mattress.

The bed frame creaked. Peter gripped the edge of it to stop himself from falling. He didn’t realise David was holding a bottle of water to his lips until a cool droplet dripped down his chin.

Peter pulled away, sucking in a shaky breath. His eyes darted up, met the man’s gaze, and he shook his head. He could’t take anything off him; something was warning him not to. Something was telling him that it was dangerous.

"Drink, Peter," David said. He sounded frustrated and patient all at once. "The car ride was hard on you. It’ll make you feel better."

He thought back to a dark, tight space with stuffy, hot air and his chest rising too fast as the bruise that the needle had left healed. He shook his head again.

"You — why —" Why would the man be taking care of him after he shoved him into the boot of a car and drove him far, far away? It was too confusing. He didn’t want the man."I — I want Tony — please."

More water was falling down his face. It was trickling out of his eyes and down his cheeks and making it hard to see.

A sweaty hand squeezed his jaw. It squeezed harder and harder and his breath hitched and salt mixed with sweet water, filling up his mouth and making his lungs convulse with sharp pricks. Even as he coughed, the bottle kept filling up his mouth, the hand kept his jaw open, and David stared down at him, trapping him, drowning him, until suddenly he could breathe.

Peter gasped, coughed water back up from his stinging lungs and fell sideways, arms wrapped tight around himself as he shuddered.

He looked up, eyes too blurry to see clearly, saw the empty, plastic bottle fall to the ground and the door slam shut, and he was alone, with only his harsh breaths breaking the sudden silence.

There was a buzzing in his ears, static in his brain, and Peter drifted away.

 

—

 

"Well, apparently," the blonde woman said, as if it were something exciting, something intriguing and new to sink her perfect, white teeth into. "Stark hired the boy after he hacked into one of his suits."

The brunette let out a laugh. "Cassie, I hardly think that even Tony Stark would do that. Where on Earth do you get your stories from?"

Off camera, an assistant tripped over a wire, spilling three medium size cappuccinos with one sugar each. Nobody watching the show would ever know that, though, and the two ladies on set didn’t even flinch. They hadn’t noticed.

"It’s a rumour," Cassie amended. She flicked her shiny, highlighted hair over her shoulder and brushed invisible dust off of her skirt. "Apparently, Iron Man was sighted in King’s Point yesterday."

The brunette raised an eyebrow. "He’s gone a bit off the rails, hasn’t he? Not cooperating with police very much."

"Well, from what we’ve gathered, Claudia," Cassie said. "Stark cares about this boy. It’s quite obvious how much this is affecting him."

On the screen behind them, a picture of Peter Parker appeared. He was smiling brightly, holding a certificate in his hands. He looked young and infectiously happy. Anybody who had watched television at all for the past week had grown accustomed to seeing him.

"As much as I think he _should_ be listening to the NYPD, you’re right." Claudia tilted her head, brushed a strand of hair from her face. "And having a superhero obsessively trying to find him does give this boy a bigger chance than others would have in his situation."

"Exactly," agreed Cassie, nodding, her gaze moving into the camera. "We’re all rooting for them both. If you see something suspicious, please call the number on screen."

 

—

 

To Peter, this was Tony: warm hands and worn t-shirts, coffee and expensive cologne. Calloused, scarred fingers running through his curls, chapped lips pressing roughly against his forehead as adrenaline raced through them, eyes stinging from exhaustion, the bite of morning air nipping at his skin. A feeling in his chest, fuzzy and comfortable and so familiar that it had to be love.

Peter would give anything to feel that. He would give anything to feel something other than the drugged haze that had settled around him in a thick fog, the stunted fear that was simmering underneath his skin.

Ropes dug into his arms, wrapped around him, forcing him to sit perfectly straight. His head lolled against his chest, his eyes shut, breath slow and sluggish. He felt a presence in the room, threatening and dangerous.

He forced his eyes open.

A plate sat on a table. Scrambled eggs and bacon, perfectly cooked and still steaming in a way that made him miss Tony’s abysmal attempts at making him breakfast whenever he stayed over. They always ended up going out for food — either for a fancy brunch on weekends, or rushing to McDonalds before school.

It was domestic, normal, and something he didn’t think twice about until it was taken away from him.

At the opposite end of the table, David sat reading a newspaper, his own plate empty, a cup of coffee that was still hot to the side.

Peter tried to shift in his seat. The ropes were too tight, but his elbows could bend and reach the silver cutlery.

He must have seen the movement over his newspaper, because David blinked up and smiled. "Good morning."

Peter blinked, tried to shake off a subtle dizziness that was starting to make the room spin. "Did you fucking try to waterboard me?"

Surprise jumped through both of them, flickering in their eyes, dancing across their faces. The words had slipped out of his mouth, but now that he had said them there was no going back.

"What — throwing me in a trunk wasn’t enough, dude? Had to go the extra mile?" His voice was croaky, and David let out a long sigh and folded the newspaper in half and gently placed it underneath his plate.

"Can we just have a nice meal before you jump down my throat, Pete?" He asked, crossing his arms.

"I — I’m literally tied to a chair."

"Eat," David said sternly. "You must be hungry."

Peter wasn’t, though. The stench of eggs was climbing up his nose and down his throat, making him feel sick. The last meal he had was the half sandwich that he threw up, but nausea stuck in him, churning his stomach.

"How long have I been here?"

David took a long sip of his coffee, even though it still looked hot enough to burn. "Here? Two days — with me, though, it’s been a week."

It had been a week, and Tony still hadn’t found him. There was no anger, no frustration; just an ache of longing. He wondered about May, about Ned, about MJ. He wondered, just for a second, if he would ever see them again. The thought was quiet and quick and nestled itself in his brain like a splinter.

"Are you going to let me go?" It was a stupid question, spoken quietly and soft. He knew the answer, wasn’t surprised that anger bubbled away beneath the man’s skin; saw his jaw tighten and his fist clench.

"You belong with me."

"You can’t keep me here forever," Peter said, gripping the wooden armrest of the chair.

David slammed his mug on the table, and the sound bounced off the walls and hot coffee spilled over the side, onto the glossy surface. He stood, slipped his hand into his pocket.

He was holding a knife, as he walked over to Peter, and it made the nerves on Peter’s body scream. David cut the ropes, dragged Peter by his arm in a rough grip before he could even stand up.

"Get _off_ me." The words had no effect. He was so _weak_ , in a way that he never thought he would be again, and it cut him to his bones, made him feel just as vulnerable as his blocked senses.

"I was going to wait…" David mumbled to himself, pulling him down the dim corridor and into a cold, concrete room.

It was a garage, with cluttered shelves blocking the large, metal door. In the corners of the room, old boxes sat in piles. Dust covered some in thick layers, but others were open, spilling clothes and children's toys onto the concrete floor. They looked like they had been searched through recently, and he could see the name _Josh_ scribbled in black marker on the sides.

There was a stainless steel tray — the kind with wheels that held scalpels and scissors — and an old music player on a wooden table. CDs sat in small stacks next to it.

There was a rusting metal bed frame in the centre of the garage. The mattress was thin, with off-white stuffing spilling out and dark stains littered across it.

" _Get off._ "

David ignored the foot that thudded hard against his calf, ignored how much Peter strained and fought against him. It was like Peter weighed nothing, like he had no strength at all.

Handcuffs dangled off the rusted frame. They snapped around Peter’s wrist, and more snapped around his ankles.

David’s eyes looked glazed. He didn’t look like he was thinking hard; more as if he were blocking out everything and trying not to think at all. He was crazy, obviously, but he seemed to normally at least have an ounce of self-awareness. Now, as Peter strained his neck to see him walk to the CD player and heard the gentle click of the play button, it had disappeared.

He vaguely recognised what was playing; an old _Elton John_ song from an album that May used to play whenever she was cleaning the apartment. It was a good song, but he sucked in a breath as David started rolling the tray over and he realised that he probably wouldn’t be able to listen to again and think happy thoughts.

Peter tried to crane his neck to see what David was doing, only to be pushed back again. He wished he could stop feeling so scared.

"I’ve been planning this for a long time," he muttered, and he picked up a flashlight. "And this is necessary, okay? It has to happen."

"What — What’s necessary?" Peter inched away, as far as the handcuffs would let him. "What are you doing?"

The flashlight shone in his eyes, too bright, and he squeezed them shut and turned his head away, only to have fingers pry them open. The light left quickly, though, and hands tilted his head back and forth, traced veins as he tugged on the restraints.

"Stay still," David said softly. Peter scowled, until the man picked up a knife off the tray. "I’m sorry, but this will hurt. I just need to test some things, yeah?"

"What the — no, get off," Peter snapped. He managed to hold back a scream behind clenched teeth when his shirt was lifted and the knife ran down his side.

It wasn’t deep, and he could feel his skin knitting itself together.

David watched, fascination shining on his face. "Incredible. I didn’t think your healing factor would be this good."

Peter, his chest heaving, tried to tug on the handcuffs again. "Look, I could’ve just told you that. Don’t need to go all _Dexter_ on me."

He had never seen _Dexter_. It had been a show that May and Ben had watched when he was younger, telling him that he could watch it with them when he was grown up, but he wasn’t really in control of what was spewing from his mouth anymore.

This time, when Peter groaned at the sting of his skin being sliced open, David simply hummed along to the song playing softly in the background.

Blood dripped down his body, onto the mattress, and Peter bit his tongue, flinched away.

"What do you want?" He sounded angry and out of breath and hurt.

David set the knife down, grabbing a syringe with blue liquid. He flicked the tip of the needle. "This is based off of Steve Rogers’ own serum. I helped Hydra develop it myself, actually."

The air got all choked up in Peter’s lungs. His eyes flew wide open. "You — You work for Hydra?"

The fondness flickered up in David’s glassy eyes. "Oh, no. I worked for SHIELD until a few years ago. I wasn’t even aware Hydra existed until the Black Widow leaked their files, and discovered I had been developing medicine for them."

And then he plunged the syringe into Peter’s neck.

"No — wait, stop —"

"Shh, shh," David whispered, finger rubbing his skin.

Peter tugged on the handcuffs again, hard enough that he felt his skin rip and blood pool around his wrist. He screamed when David reopened the cut on his side, made it bigger and deeper, and it _hurt_.

Another song flicked on, and he tried to imagine May on an early Sunday morning, hair tied in a messy knot, vacuuming the rugs and singing to the music.

It was cold in the garage, though, and icy blue of David’s eyes went right through his skin.

 

—

 

To Tony, this was Peter: thin, long fingers that were always cold, always moving. Oversized sweaters, stolen shirts, a million flavours of tea. A comforting weight pressing against his side, a head buried in his shoulder, and a feeling that ran through him; something that had managed to quietly break through his walls. It was almost scarily familiar, the feeling, yet it was so different, paternal — if he let himself think for too long.

The media didn’t know that. They could never know Peter as well as Tony did, would never know that sometimes Peter hid in cupboards and fell asleep or that he could only drink ice coffee with sweetener in it or that most of the time he still carried an inhaler even though he would never need it again.

Only a few people in the world would ever know the numerous quirks that Peter Parker had, and FRIDAY, though not technically a person, continued to make note and store them in her files. She calculated that it was something her boss may find useful one day, whether that be his twenty-first birthday or just to look at fondly **.**

FRIDAY also stored security footage in her files. Recently, her boss had been rewatching a video from Peter’s suit; one that showed David Taylor’s face as he pulled the boy away.

She had traced that man’s face all around New York, all the way to the Hampton Bays.

Her boss hadn’t found Peter, though. He was in his suit as he burst through the doors of the worn down house, and there were no lifeforms on her scanners other than the police units surrounding the building.

The note that had been left simply said the words _stop looking._

Her boss hadn’t stopped looking. When he had flown back, through the security feed, she watched him as he entered his lab. He was silent, and Peter’s chemistry book was still open, untouched, along with a half empty mug of tea and deconstructed web shooters.

He threw the mug at the wall, and kicked stools to the ground and screamed until his throat tore and collapsed to his knees with his head in his hands.

Pepper was keeping May Parker busy, so FRIDAY had quietly alerted Rhodey and started to track the growing hours that he went without sleep and how much his hands started to shake.

FRIDAY’s boss was nothing if not stubborn, and she knew from the carefully saved footage on her files — of him and Peter working in the lab in a comfortable silence, of them casually collapsing on top of each other and watching _Star Wars_ for the twenty-second time, of the way her boss’ face lit up whenever he laid eyes on the boy — that he would find Peter. Peter meant too much to him to fail.

 

—

 

The new drugs were affecting his healing. That much was obvious.

Bruises that would normally take an hour to heal were still darkening. Cuts ran down his torso, not bleeding but open, and his ribs were starting to stick out against his hollow stomach.

Peter sank into the bath, let his face slip under and the still hot water surround him completely.

The world was different underwater. Everything was slow and sluggish and so far away. He looked up, and the roof was distorted by the miniature waves on the surface, and he could hear the blood rushing through his ears.

He let a few bubbles from his lungs, watched as they rose and popped.

There was something calming about it, like the layer of water above him was shielding him, hiding him away.

It started to become a challenge. He held the sides of the bathtub, pushed against it to keep himself under as his lungs started to burn, tried to see how long he could hold his breath.

More bubbles were let from his lungs, his chest spasmed, and he pushed down harder, squeezed his eyes shut until his body took over and he broke the surface of the water, gasping for air as it rattled his lungs.

Peter slowly fell back against the porcelain tub, his head resting on the edge, and wished he could stay underwater forever. With the cold prickling his exposed skin, the world rushed back, sharp and still.

Days of grime and blood and sweat slowly trickled into the water. He grabbed a facecloth, gently started scrubbing his torn skin, ran some water through his curls and tried to rinse the muckfrom it.

"Peter?" A voice called from behind the door, and he tensed, stared at the door handle and willed it not to open. "Dinner’s ready. Are you almost done?"

Peter swallowed. "Yeah — Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute."

He didn’t relax until the footsteps had disappeared, and he slipped out of bath, carefully drying his skin, running it through his hair, trying to ignore the pounding in his chest.

Stupidly, he had half-believed that David wouldn’t hurt him — torture him, at least. The way David talked to him, looked at him with so much affection made him think that he had a safety net. He had been an idiot to not expect it to get worse.

Peter traced the red, slowly scaring slits on his wrist.

 _Your webs,_ David had asked. _Do they come from spinnerets?_

He had told David that it was just a gimmick, that he formulated the webs in a lab, but his skin was split open anyway, peeled back and studied.

The reflection in the mirror showed deep eye bags and sunken cheeks and raw gashes against pale skin.

Peter slipped on the clothes that David had left for him. They were a size too big, and he had to roll the sweatpants up. The t-shirt had a _JT_ scrawled in marker on the tag, and he couldn’t help but feel his stomach churn. He was wearing a dead person’s clothes.

In the garage, there had been boxes. They were filled with toys and clothes and posters of another life, weighed down with memories long gone.

Josh must have been David’s son, and from what Peter could guess, he had passed away when he was around Peter’s age. The odd affection, the obsession with Peter belonging with him would make sense; David was a man driven to insanity by the death of his kid, and Peter was a replacement. Still, it didn’t take into account the fixation on Spider-Man, and the mutations that Peter had been through.

David had said he had been tracking Spider-Man for months, that the fact Spider-Man was Peter was simply luck. He had worked for SHIELD, so enhanced people shouldn’t have been too surprising. There was something deeper going on, whether it was connected to Josh or not, and Peter didn’t know what it made him to the man. Was he a some twisted version of a son, or was he an experiment?

The door didn’t creek when Peter opened it. He checked up and down the hallway, making sure it was clear, and climbed onto the roof. His wrist were still sore from the cuffs, but climbing felt easier than walking, and he silently scrambled towards the garage door.

He reached down to try and jiggled the handle. Locked.

Peter wasn’t really expecting it to be open, but something still sunk in his chest.

There were only four other doors in the cabin; one was the bathroom, and the other his room. He dropped to the floor, glancing up to the end of the hallway and licking his lips, and opened the door to his left.

It was just a cupboard, with linen neatly folded in piles and a calendar from two-thousand and nine.

He shut it, turned and opened the door to his right, and there was light. Natural light, gleaming in through a clear glass widow. Something jumped in his throat, eyes wide with disbelief. Every other window in the house had been boarded up, but this one wasn’t.

He stepped into the room. It was David’s bedroom, with a double bed in the middle, perfectly made without a single crease. The thick curtains were opened, and the sunset shone in through the forest that was apparently surrounding them.

The glass was reinforced, probably bulletproof, shockproof, Peter-proof. He forced himself to forget about throwing himself at it. He didn’t know what apparent numerous amounts of drugs David had given to him were doing, exactly, but he wasn’t at his full strength, and he’d only end up getting hurt more.

In the bottom corner of the window, there was a small, black box attacked. It had a green light, a number-pad to put in a passcode. The window was digitally locked.

Something like hope fluttered in his chest. Given enough time, he knew he could break the code, or at least disable it. He wouldn’t be able to spend much more time in David’s room, but maybe he could make something to override it —

A dull prick on the base of his neck made him jump, and Peter scrambled away and turned to the door. When he poked his head around the corner, no one was there. He slowly shut it, crept back down the hallway and reached the bathroom just in time for David to call out.

"Pete, dinner’s getting cold!"

Peter took a shaky breath in. David made eye contact when he reached the other end of the hall. The television was playing quietly and it’s high-frequency buzzing was so much louder than normal, the picture was all staticky and grainy, and two plates sat on opposite ends of the table.

"Come, sit," David said, taking his seat.

The windows were all boarded up, the single door padlocked with about six different locks and chains and a keypad rested on the side. The bedroom was going to be the easiest option.

Peter took a seat.

The roast was still steaming hot, and David was tucking in. Peter could hear him chewing and his knife and fork scraping against the plate.

His own knife and fork, instead of being metal, were plastic. David glanced up and saw him twirling them in his fingers.

"Just a — precaution, Peter," he said, smiling.

He knew the food was spiked, and that his senses were slowly gaining strength, but he also knew that he’d have no chance of getting his healing back without eating, and his head was spinning and his stomach was cramping painfully.

He took a small forkful of peas, carefully chewed them and swallowed. David tried to pretend that he wasn’t watching.

And then something caught his eye and he flickered his gaze to the television.

It hurt to see Tony. There was a picture of them, grinning, standing at the edge of the Empire State Building, the city sprawled behind them, the clouds grey and low. The image wasn’t even three months old, and his heart thudded and his eyes stung and it hurt to breathe.

The picture faded away, leaving two news reporters talking too quietly for Peter to make out and a cropped yearbook photo of him in the corner of the screen.

He looked down to his plate, and something bitter and angry and fearful licked the inside of his chest.

Peter didn’t finish his dinner, and David gave him such a disapproving stare that it almost made him laugh, but the sting of the cuts covering his body made it catch in his throat.

David walked him back to his room, flicked on the lights and showed him in.

"I gave you a book to keep you occupied," he said. The way his icy, glassy eyes shone in the dim light was unnerving. "But it’s for later. Go to sleep, now."

Peter just stared.

"Goodnight, Pete." The door clicked shut and the chain locked him in.

Dizziness rolled through him, exhaustion flooded his brain, but he shook it off. On the bed, a book was carefully placed. _The Legend of Icarus, and other Greek Myths._

He had never studied Icarus in school, but everyone knew what the story was; he was the son of Daedalus, who escaped his prison with wings made by his father, but died when he flew too close to the sun.

The air seemed to get stretched thin as a warning rang through the air.

An ancient clock on the dresser caught Peter’s attention, and he slowly stepped closer, book still in his hands. He thought back to the clear window with the digital lock.

There was a painting on the cover of the novel: _The Lament for Icarus._ Him and MJ had seen it when they went to an art gallery one weekend. Icarus’ wings were beautiful; golden and graceful and shining.

Tony was constantly teaching him how to build devices and trinkets from scraps — seemingly useless things that were always played off as nothing. Peter wondered if it was something to do with his PTSD after Afghanistan, that Tony wanted him to be prepared if he ever needed to escape from somewhere with nothing to help but a pile of junk.

Tony had built him a pair of wings, and as he traced the cool, gold metal of the clock, he silently promised that he wouldn’t fly too close to the sun.

 

—

 

"He was a lot like you."

Peter only let out a quiet whine, trying to pull away from the clammy hands stroking his hair back. Pain swelled in waves, sparking with every shallow breath.

"Very smart, very sharp," David said. He paused for a moment, and Peter watched through hooded eyes as he wiped a cloth on scalpel. It came away stained a deep red. "He got his kindness from his mother. Just like I suspect you got yours from your aunt."

Peter whimpered in protest, tugged on the handcuffs chaining him to the bed. He didn’t want David knowing about May, didn’t want him thinking about her. He had to protect her.

"May, right?" David slid the blade along his ribs, and Peter screamed. "She did a good job raising you. As did Ben."

There was a different type of hurt that ran though him; deep seeded and entwined with his soul.

"Don’t…" Peter sucked in a breath. "Don’t talk about them."

"Shh." Something clicked above him, and Peter blinked up, saw David taking a picture of the newest wound and scribbling something down on a notepad.

And then a piece of fabric was stuffed into his mouth and he choked back a sob.

"I can look after you now," David whispered. "You don’t need anyone else."

He was talking about Tony now, too. Tony wasn’t a replacement for Peter’s dad, just like May wasn’t a replacement for Peter’s mom. He wasn’t a replacement for the gaping hole that Ben left when he died. He filled a new place that Peter didn’t know was missing, softened the prickly edges and made Ben’s death easier to deal with. Tony was so much more than a mentor, meant more to Peter than anything expect May and Ned.

He did need Tony.

"My son… he died ten years ago, today." The words were softly uttered, like saying them too loud would awaken something, like saying them too loud would make it true. "I don’t think it was a spider — just some kind of insect that had escaped from my lab."

Peter’s eyes snapped up and the air in the room stilled, silent. 

"I think it was the fever that got him." David slowly traced his hand down Peter’s cheek, until his fingers were loosely gripped around his neck. "Did you have a fever?"

Very slowly, he nodded. The pressure around his neck tightened.

"Your aunt and uncle probably thought it just a bad flu — is that it?" Another nod, more pressure. "He was in a lot of pain. His DNA was deconstructing itself and building itself up again in the span of a few hours."

Peter could just breathe through his nose, even with the fabric stuffed in his mouth.

"I’m so glad that it’s you — who turned out to be Spider-Man," David whispered. "I had watched you for months after the last one. My expectations were high, but you… You’re so much more perfect than I could have hoped for."

 _The last one_.

He could hear the words as they rattled him to his aching bones. The bed he was on was stained with blood that wasn’t just his. David had targeted him not because he knew about his secret identity, but because he wanted another _one_.

Something in Peter was too fearful to guess how many others had died before David had gotten him.

Something else felt too close to acceptance. He should have guessed, should have expected the vile man to be capable of so much worse. If others hadn’t managed to escape, then he probably didn’t ever have a chance.

 

—

 

His back was so stiff that he wasn’t sure he could move it. His eyes were lidded, hands shaking in his lap and fresh blood still dripping down his forehead.

David gently wiped it away with a cold flannel, seemingly forgetting that he was the one that made him bleed.

"Do you want anything special for breakfast tomorrow?" He asked, standing and placing the cloth on the table. "Tomorrow marks two weeks."

Peter’s chest clenched. He bit the inside of his cheek, let out a slow, heavy breath, and shook his head, face impassive as David glanced back at him from where he was fiddling with the camera.

The couch sunk when he sat, making Peter slide closer. The arm that slid around Peter’s shoulders wasn’t like Tony; loose and affection, saying so much more than words could convey. It wasn’t like May; soft and loving, with a kiss pressed against the top of his head. It was firm and possessive, pulling him against David’s side without the option to escape.

"Smile," David said, and the camera flashed and the lens’ shutter flicked. His arms tightened. "We’re gonna be a proper family, Pete. I promise."

David waited outside the door as Peter bathed that night. There was nothing that Peter could use as a weapon, except maybe the dental floss, but it would probably snap before he could even knock David out.

He stood by the bed as Peter slid in, too, and Peter turned to the wall and curled into himself, squeezing his eyes shut tight so he didn’t have to see the man staring down at him.

He flinched away from the fingers running through his damp hair, tried to imagine that it was just Tony.

"Goodnight, Pete."

Twenty seconds passed in darkness after David left, before he let the tears that had been stinging in his eyes fall and the heavy weight in his heart out as sobs tore his throat.

He felt clogged up, after. So exhausted that the thought of doing something other than shut his eyes seemed like too much.

Peter forced himself up though, head pounding. David hadn’t given him another dose of the serum that stopped his healing factor, and the wounds from earlier were mending, even if they were slowly than usual. His senses were still being kept at bay with every bite of food he had, but they were better. He could see in the dark just enough.

Stepping over the creaky bits of floorboards that he had memorised, he carefully picked up the clock and pried it open. It didn’t work anymore, because of how many parts he had taken out, and he reached down to beside the dresser, into the small houseplant, and grabbed the device. It was only the beginnings of one; it almost bore resemblance to a widow bite, just bigger. He still needed tweezers or something small to do the detail work, and some wiring and something to activate it.

He didn’t know if it would work. He didn’t know if he could escape, but he looked at the picture of Icarus and figured that to fly too close to the sun in the first place, he had to build his wings.

Might as well go out with a bang. Tony would be disappointed if he didn’t.

Just as his brain started arguing with the thought — that Tony would never be disappointed in him — his neck pricked, sharply.

His fingers fumbled to put the clock back together, to hide the device in the stems of the plant, and footsteps stopped just outside his door. The chain jingled, and the door opened.

David had checked on Peter for the last few nights. It was normally later, late enough that he thought he still had time to work and slip into bed and pretend to be asleep until the man left.

David’s face was much more angry than he had been expecting.

"What are you doing up?" He snapped, storming over, grabbing him by his arms in a bruising drip.

"I just — I was getting the book — I wanted —"

"I told you to go to bed," David hissed, throwing him on the mattress. "I don’t care if you want to read — you do that tomorrow."

"I — I’m sorry." Peter just managed to block the punch sloppily thrown at him with his forearm.

"You don’t get out of bed unless I tell you — got it?" He was towering over Peter, scowling down.

Peter sucked in a breath. "Yes — Yeah. I’m sorry."

The bed creaked when David sat on the end of it, watching him, face drawn in and furious. Maybe getting out of bed had been a pet peeve of David’s when his son was alive. Maybe another kid had done it and ruined something or almost escaped. Something was making him so angry, and Peter wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

"Next time I catch you out of bed, I’ll chain you to it. Understand?" David asked.

Peter shifted slightly, inching into the corner, and nodded.

"Go to sleep." David didn’t move.

The light shone in dimly from the hallway and Peter, very slowly, as if moving too quickly would set David off, slid underneath the covers and turned to wall, hugging his knees. He pulled the blankets over his head as much as he could without being under them completely, but David’s hard stare burned right through them.

He counted to one-thousand two-hundred and twenty-three when David left, and he didn’t move for the rest of the night.

 

—

 

The voice messages played throughout the oddly cold lab, echoing on the walls.

" _Tones, I know how much the kid means to you_ ," Rhodey’s voice was laced with fatigue, and almost seemed accepting, like he knew the message was pointless. " _But you gotta take a break and let the police do their thing. You haven’t spoken to anyone other than Pepper in three days. Just… have a nap, maybe. Get something that isn’t coffee to drink._ "

The next one started playing, and the voice was focused and hard and distinctly female.

" _I’ll be back in the country in two days, Tony._ " The amount of times that Natasha Romanoff changed her phone number, it was a miracle that he had tracked her down in the first place. " _I’m sorry I can’t be there sooner, but… I’m glad you called. We’re going to find this kid, alive._ "

" _River Edge was a bust, Boss._ " Happy sounded just as tired as Rhodey. " _They’re thinking north, that he’s out of state now — gonna hand the case over. We’ll be dealing with the kid’s annoying ass in no time. I promise._ "

 

—

 

Peter figured that the two week milestone would put David in a good mood. It hadn’t.

He sat Peter down at the table and turned the TV on.

Peter’s heart jumped when he saw a shaky video of Iron Man, landing outside of what seemed to be an apartment building, a police barricade surrounding the entrance. The person filming was standing behind the barrier, but Peter could still make out Tony’s face through the grainy, shaking picture.

He had dark stubble instead of his neatly shaved beard. He was pale and his eyes were angry and tired and a million other things that the video couldn’t show.

"I told him to stop looking." David was gripping the back of Peter’s chair. "He should understand by now that you aren’t his. You’re mine."

He wasn’t anyone’s, Peter thought, not looking away from the screen. Too soon, the video stopped and changed to news anchors, talking seriously. He swallowed around the lump in his throat.

"He hasn’t stopped snooping in my old apartment, at my other house — still thinks that we want him." David’s voice was almost hysterical.

Peter blinked, took a shaky breath. His heart thudded and he just needed to hear Tony’s voice. Maybe it would give him enough strength to escape. Maybe it would give him enough bravery to face the fact that he was going to die, either by David’s hand or his own.

David wasn’t sane enough to not completely snap soon. Peter would say something about his son, or he would cut an artery and accidentally bleed him out. If his escape attempt didn’t work, he was’t going to survive much longer, and the thought was almost comforting; living an eternity in the secluded house with no one but David was far worse than dying.

"Let me speak to him," Peter whispered, swallowing again. He cleared his throat and twisted around so he could meet David’s icy gaze. "I’ll tell him to stop looking, that we don’t want him."

David’s mouth twisted. "Like last time? No way."

"I promise," he said. "I tell him that I don’t want him to find me."

His eyes narrowed, but then they flickered to the television and he pulled a mobile from his back pocket. It was a burner phone; thick and heavy. He pressed a few buttons on the keypad and set it on the table.

It rang loudly, on speaker, and Peter tried to take a deep breath through his nose.

"Mister Stark?"

He couldn’t breathe, though — not really. David’s icy stare was burning his skin, making his heart thump and thump. Something was welling in his throat, and it stung as it worked up to his eyes, made his hands shake as they gripped the table.

" _Peter?_ " Tony’s voice wavered with an urgency that cut through the thick haze in Peter’s mind.

There was so much emotion in that one word that Peter wondered how he had ever doubted that Tony loved him. They had never said it out loud, just showed it in a way that spoke louder than words.

He figured, as he squeezed his eyes shut and cowered away from the man, that if this was the last time he ever spoke to Tony, he should say what he should have ages ago — maybe when Tony had almost started crying at the Father’s Day present Peter had given him, or maybe when he showed up to the career day at school because May couldn’t make it, or maybe when he first talked Peter down from a particularly bad panic attack.

"I love you," he said. It came out as a sob, and made his chest spasm and his breath hitch.

The reply, whatever it may have been, was lost to Peter as he shielded his face from the punches and the kicks. David may have been able to beat the back-chatting out of him, may have been able to rip the stubbornness from his bones and any ounce of bravery from his gut, but he hadn’t managed to get rid of the bond he and Tony had. He never would, because for as long as Peter was alive, he knew that Tony would never give up on him.

He wouldn’t be alive much longer.

David pulled him down the hallway, threw him against walls and dragged him into the cold garage, yelling words that Peter couldn’t make out.

His right wrist was cuffed to the bed frame, and he was left wheezing as David reached over and grabbed something — a pair of scissor, long and curved and sharp.

"I gave you _trust_ ," David hissed, and Peter pulled away as he tried to grab his left hand. "But, no — maybe you need something permanent to remind you to listen"

David was going to cut off his fingers, Peter realised, scrambling back as far as he could. David grabbed his left wrist in a hard grip and Peter pulled and kicked and tried to _get away_.

"No — Don’t," he pleaded, yanking his arm. David was pulling his fingers out, though, the sharp curve of the blades trying to close around them. "Stop — Don’t — Dad, _please!_ "

Everything froze. Glassy eyes met Peter’s, wide and shocked and Peter didn’t dare breathe.

It was almost hesitant, the way the scissors were put down, and Peter’s heart thumped, because it worked, it had _worked_.

He was thrown into his room, the door slammed shut, not even a minute later.

Peter curled up in the corner of the room, next to the wilting plant, and ignored the tears that fell off his cheeks, onto the pages of _The Legend of Icarus_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took way too long to get out and im so sorry  
> but also i hope that length makes up for it ?? im sorry
> 
> and i wrote Mum like Mom and it felt wrong so look out for that lol
> 
> next chapter should be up by next week (im hoping) maybe sooner  
> and thank you all so much for reading <33


	3. oh, darling, if you leave me (i’ll never make it alone)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this turned out so much longer than i planned for whoops

He hated the way the word rolled off his tongue. The man was undeserving of it, and Peter’s stomach clenched whenever his mouth formed the word.

"It hurts," he whispered, tugging weakly on the chains. "Dad, please."

He couldn’t overuse it, Peter knew. David would pick up that it was utterly meaningless and only self-preserving.

But, it worked.

David ran a hand down Peter's face, before tipping a drop from the vial in his free hand. It had a stench of antiseptics and alcohol, and when it dripped into the open wound on Peter’s ribs it stung and made a sound escape his throat; high pitched and breathy like a whine.

"Okay," David said quietly, and his hand disappeared and there was a scratching of pencil on paper as he scribbled down notes. "Okay, let’s get you cleaned up."

He hated the way David un-cuffed him so gently, how he pretended he hadn’t been slicing him open for hours and days and weeks. How he tucked him into bed afterwards like he was a fucking child and told him to sleep tight.

The worst thing, though, was the way David woke him up. He spent hours in the dark, trying to finish the device, and slipped back into the scratchy sheets, laid awake until his traitorous eyes closed and he drifted. He didn’t dream, but he always jolted awake to the hallway light spilling underneath the crack in the door. He would curl into himself, squeeze his eyes shut and try to calm his pounding heart down, try to pretend that May was bustling around their apartment, about to wake him up with a cup of tea and a smile and a kiss on the forehead as she rushed out the door to get to work.

Footsteps always came down the hall, bright lights always flickered on, and possessive fingers traced over his skin, burning it, rotting it away.

"Good morning, Pete," David would whisper. "I made breakfast."

Peter would swallow the lump in his throat, look up at the man and feel such an odd detachment that he wondered if he would ever feel again.

He did feel again; fear crept back slowly as the morning chill pricked at him and the nauseating smell of bacon and eggs filled his nose.

He was pulled into the garage, after. Tied down to the bed and cut open as _Elton John_ or _The Beatles_ played quietly behind him. He tried to listen to the words, but they always blurred as his screams echoed off the concrete walls.

One night, as the TV played in the background and he mixed the sickly sweet smelling food around his plate, he bent the end prong of the plastic fork. He glanced up at David, saw him looking away, and pushed down until it snapped off.

"Oh," he said in his croaky voice, faking surprise. "Uh, sorry."

David smiled and shook his head, rushed to the kitchen to get him a new set as Peter slipped the broken prong into his pocket.

David had been smiling a lot.

The next day, as the bathwater slowly cooled, he found a toothbrush, pushed into the very back of the bathroom cupboard. An electric toothbrush.

It was old and the battery long dead, but hysterical, relieved laughter bubbled in his throat and he knelt on the tile floor and picked it apart.

_How I envy those baby birds, Icarus said softly. For soon their wings will grow strong and they will be able to soar away._

The book pages were crumpled and the corners aged. The ink was mixed with the blood of too many others, and as Peter soaked up the words, he wondered if he would be the last.

In the darkness, with the sun rising over the trees surrounding him and its rays only just showing through the cracks in the boarded up window, he held onto the end of the plastic prong, ears twitching for the slightest noise. Ever so carefully, he moved a wire with the plastic and attached it.

It buzzed to life.

Peter sucked in a breath and quickly undid it, carefully put it down so the stems of the dying plant covered it and buried it in dirt. He slipped back into bed, nerves too alight to sleep.

 

—

 

That morning, the air was still and biting with anticipation. His muscles where itching to glance back at his room, as if it would ease his paranoia that David knew, that David was going to find out.

"Three weeks, today, Peter," David said quietly from his seat. His mouth was curved into a small smile, his glassy eyes shining with happiness as they watched him over the newspaper. "I was thinking that we do something special."

Peter swallowed a forkful of eggs that tasted like sawdust and didn’t look up from his plate. "Like what?"

"Like… maybe we could watch a movie? I have a few that you’d probably like."

Peter’s knife and fork — metal now — softly clattered when he put them down. He nodded, wrapped his arms around his body. "Sure — yeah."

When silence surrounded them and he could feel a stare stinging his skin, Peter glanced up, biting his lip.

"What’s the matter, Pete?" David’s eyebrows furrowed and he folded the paper in half and set it down. "I thought you’d be excited."

There was a tingling in his brain and on the base of his neck. A warning.

"I — I am," he lied, hands clenching and fingernails digging into his skin. "Just… didn’t sleep well."

"Oh." David tilted his head, before standing, his chair scraping on the floor, and grabbing the dishes in his hands. "Well, we’ll have an easy day, today. Just gotta run through some test and then we can watch some movies, yeah?"

A stone sunk down his throat, weighing in his gut as his heart thumped. He was going to get out. He could get out.

Peter nodded, looking back down at the table as David collected his almost full plate, frowning.

He didn’t say anything, though, and Peter heard the tap start running behind him.

On the silent television, more news reporters were discussing something that he couldn’t hear. He watched it as David washed the dishes, barely daring to breathe, praying that he could see a picture, a video, _something_ to do with Tony. He always watched, every morning, but in the past week, there had been nothing.

His prays were answered, though. A grainy picture appeared onscreen. A mess of red hair covered a woman’s face, whipping in the wind, but her posture was undeniable, her leather jacket and gun holstered to her leg familiar. Natasha Romanoff was walking in step with Tony.

Tony’s eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, even though the picture was taken in the dark, at night. Tony wore a t-shirt, Peter realised, that he’d given him for Christmas. It was cheesy, but had make Tony grin and laugh and roll his eyes when he’d read the _I make horrible science puns, but only periodically_ inscribed on it.

Peter couldn’t think as the world froze, as tears stung in his eyes and his breath hitched.

When the TV went black, he jumped, and felt David’s presence looming over him, pointing the remote at the screen. Peter blinked down at the floor, refusing to look up.

"Let’s go." David’s voice was laced with steel and ice.

 

—

 

"We’re setting up a base camp in Worcester and Northampton. I want the Shadow squad with Tony and I, and the rest of you pick your own divisions and devise a search area for everything in between." The Black Widow stood at the lectern as though she was born to be there. People clung to her words like their lives depended on it. Most of the time, they did. "My sources have said that Taylor’s family is buried in Amherst, so focus your searches on that area."

Her guarded, serious eyes flickered to Tony, who stood next to her, staring out the window. He was the only one not listening, deep in thought. He could probably recite every detail of the plan in his sleep.

"Taylor has some serious connections to Hydra," the Widow said, addressing the room again. Her nails were painted a dark red, and they were chipped as they tapped staccato patterns on the stand. "He’s a high threat level, so treat him as such. But whatever happens, the kid is to be brought back in. Nothing else matters."

The room disassembled, the noise level rising as agents and police rushed to their stations. Natasha surveyed them for a moment, head titled up, before turning to Tony and crossing her arms.

"Taylor’s hidden," Tony muttered, not taking his eyes away from the window. "You already got all the information you could."

"Yeah," she agreed. "But now we know that Taylor got help from Hydra to keep his property off record. We know that he has a house somewhere in Massachusetts, and we know that he used to live here with his wife and son. We know that we’re pointed in the right direction."

"We don’t _know_ anything." Tony pushed off the wall, ripping his tinted glasses off and glaring. "Except how many other kids’ disappearances are linked to him. We don’t even know — we don’t know if — if Peter’s —"

He grabbed his left wrist and looked away, chest heaving. Natasha bit the inside of her cheek and surveyed the chaotic room.

"We’re close, Tony," she said. "We’re going to find him."

 

—

 

He didn’t know if the scars would ever disappear. That had never been a problem for Peter. His skin healed so fast that he didn’t have to worry.

But as he traced the red, raised line from his wrist almost to his elbow, he wondered. It had been reopened so many times that he wondered if he would ever heal again.

David sat too close. He was uncomfortably warm, his skin sweaty and slick. Peter squeezed into the corner, up against the armrest, wrapped his arms around his knees and bit his tongue hard when the man slid an arm around the back of the couch.

Tony wasn’t sparse with contact. Once they had gotten close, there were always fingers running through Peter’s curls, or an arm around his shoulder, or a steady hand on the back of his neck. They stayed up well into the morning and crashed on the couch with a movie playing in the background, limbs tangled in a way that would make Pepper smile and sneak a picture on her phone to tease them about later.

But Tony knew boundaries. Tony knew that sometimes Peter had to curl up in a dark corner and not speak or move or be near anyone for a few hours. He knew that sometimes the most Peter could manage in a panic attack was a hand loosely grasping his own, and anything other than that would make his throat close up and his lungs not work for hours afterwards.

Peter knew boundaries, too. He knew that Tony got just as anxious as him, sometimes, and that he needed to be quiet for a while and let him calm down.

They knew each other, had found a perfect balance, laced with affection and comfort and safety.

The screen flicked on, the VCR wiring, the high pitch making Peter wince, and the staticky video started playing.

It was _The Terminator_ , he realised, his heart sinking. It was one of his favourites, and he didn’t want David’s taint on anything he loved.

"You seen this?" David asked in a hushed voice, turning up the volume.

There was an ache inside Peter, a void of empty that wanted nothing more than to give in and wither away.

"Yeah," he whispered, hugging himself tighter.

He couldn’t lose himself in the movie, not with his heart pounding so quickly. He couldn’t focus, and his senses were more clear than they’d been for three weeks. Every snap of branch as the wind whistled outside and every heavy breath from David made his muscles tense even more.

Just picturing his device — his way out — seemed too dangerous, like David would read his mind and find it.

Peter flinched when the end credits came on. David yawned and stretched — too close, making his skin crawl — and turned the TV off.

"Good movie?" David asked casually, leaning forward.

He could picture Tony saying the exact same thing, sitting in the exact same position. It made his stomach clench and he nodded.

David was behind him as they walked down the dim hallway. Peter fingers itched to move, to tap on his leg like they did when he was anxious, to build something, to try and release the panic slowly building in his chest.

As he walked to his bed, trying so hard not to look rushed, he forced himself to look anywhere but the wilting plant.

He slipped underneath the sheets, faced the wall, and clenched his shaking hands.

David tucked the blankets around his shoulders, stroked fingers down his cheek. He was silent for a moment, unmoving, and Peter snuck a glance up.

David was looking towards the corner of the room, right at the plant.

"We’ll have to water that tomorrow," he said.

A wave of dizziness rolled through Peter. His heart stuttered and a rush of cold ran through his face, drowning all colour from it.

"Don’t want it dying." David smiled, ruffled his hair and turned to the door, walking out. At the doorway, he stopped and looked back, turning the light off. "Goodnight, Pete. Sleep well."

He waited until the hallway light had flickered off, too, to let out the sob of relief, stuffed his fist into his mouth so he didn’t make any sound, ignored the fuzziness of panic that hadn’t left and probably never would.

Peter tried to focus on the hard outline of the book underneath his pillow. It was supposed to be a warning, but the cover reminded him of art galleries and art galleries reminded him of MJ, and _Icarus_ grounded him, made his head clear so he could remember what he needed to do.

When David checked on him, an hour later, he evened out his breaths and parted his lips and didn’t flinch at the hand tracing over him.

It had to work, Peter decided when the door softly shut and the chain clicked. It had to work, or he’d end up dead. He didn’t want to die, didn’t want to think about how MJ or Ned or Tony or May would deal with it. He didn’t want to think about how they were dealing with him being gone at all.

He’d seen the look in Tony’s eyes, even through the static of the old TV; angry and exhausted and forbidding. Peter didn’t want to be the reason it was there.

The darkness of the room was only broken by the minuscule moon rays slithering through the barricaded window. He let out a slow breath and sat up, book in his hands, wincing at the creaking bed.

He slid down the wall next to plant, tugged on his sneakers, and waited.

The noises of the cabin had become uncomfortably familiar to Peter. The walls cracked every few minutes and the rusting fridge buzzed from the kitchen and the pipes in the walls rattled. It was so much louder than usual, though. He could hear his own breathing, too, as he forced it slower and slower.

Hours blurred, mixing in his mind and making his muscles ache with stiffness, until he knew. Maybe it was his sixth-sense, maybe it was just gut instinct, but he knew that it was time.

Peter’s hands were trembling. He grasped his device, laid it out on the dresser and pried apart the long-broken clock. He took the hidden plastic prong, gritted his teeth as his fingers shook and he clumsily reattached the wire.

It whirred underneath his fingertips.

He swallowed, shut his eyes for a moment, before pocketing it. Peter pulled out the clock face and swivelled the hour hand off, gripped it tight. His eyes were used to the dark, and he touched the book, just briefly, studying Icarus’ gleaming wings.

And then he walked to the door and gripped the cold, scratched handle and silently twisted it open as far as the chain would let him.

It was odd how much an open door could change the atmosphere surrounding him. The buzzing fridge and the creaking walls were deafening, with only his heart thumping and the breath he sucked in louder. He felt exposed, like David would jump out at any second.

Peter, holding the clock hand in his shaking fingers, bent his arm around to reach the doorframe, where the lock was fastened into the wall. He put the end of the hand into the screw, like a screwdriver, and started turning.

He was careful not to go fast. He had tested it, knew that only the hour hand fitted, and one of the screws was already half loose. The first screw dangled from its place, and he pulled it out, put it in his pocket, and started on the bottom one.

His arm was pushing against the door awkwardly, the wood digging into his shoulder blade. His forearm was starting to burn, but he didn’t stop, didn’t look away or focus on anything else until the second screw was out far enough that he could pull from the doorframe.

The chain rattled as it swung down, and he jumped, terror flooding in him and everything freezing and panic scratching his throat.

Nothing happened. The all-encompassing silence returned, heavy against Peter’s skin as his heart calmed down. He was okay.

Peter slipped through the down, twisting around so he could grip onto the wall and climb up. It was quieter, and he felt so much safer as he noiselessly crawled along the roof, more like himself.

When he reached David’s door, he checked his pockets, unnecessarily. The device was safely there, buzzing against his leg.

Every noise was too loud. The air was sharp, and he climbed down slightly so he could reach the handle.

Slowly, he turned it, and pushed the door open.

David was breathing heavily, tangled in sheets. He crawled through the doorway, not moving it any more than he had to, and onto the roof. The trees outside were swaying slightly, the light of the moon and stars illuminating them, and his device weighed down his pocket comfortingly.

Just as he had moved around the ceiling fan, Peter glanced down. A mobile phone sat on David’s bedside table, thrown carelessly as if he knew Peter wouldn’t dare try and take it.

He was wrong.

Even asleep, David’s presence made his neck tingle, his mind jump nervously, and his skin itched as he crept closer, down the wall so he could reach the phone.

David moved, and Peter’s muscles froze, eyes wide, a spider ready to bolt. He was just rolling over, though, to face the other direction, and Peter relaxed the slightest bit.

The burner phone was different to the one he had talked to Tony on. He had already guessed that the call had been blocked and rerouted and there hadn’t been enough time to descramble it, so maybe David was paranoid, too.

Peter waited until he was crouching in front of the window to slip the mobile into his pocket.

David’s eyes were closed and he was in a deep sleep, but Peter couldn’t shake the feeling that he would wake any second, that he was being watched with amusement, as if David was simply seeing how far he was going to go before jumping up and dragging him away.

He took a deep breath, made his trembling hands clip his device onto the lock.

His finger hovered over the activation button and he shied his face away from the small blast that he knew it would make.

It seemed like a weight was pressing against his chest. A type of panic was spinning through him unlike anything he had ever felt, and he wanted to shrink into himself, small and childish and too filled with terror to move.

An owl hooted from somewhere outside of his prison, and he heard a flutter of strong, sturdy wings.

Peter pressed the button.

It wasn’t an explosion, just a bright spark that was sharp and cutting and loud in the silent night.

David startled awake, jumping up and yelling deliriously, but Peter was already slamming the window open, tripping over the frame and into the freezing air and onto the dewy grass.

"Peter!" David roared, and Peter scrambled up, heart thudding dangerously, and he ran.

Peter sprinted faster than he ever had, into the tree line and over branches and crunching on fallen leaves.

"PETER!" David’s voice echoed all around the night, and his senses were screaming, every breath like a knife in his lungs as the cold air slashed against them.

He could hear thudding feet behind him, but Peter was quicker, even when he was so weak.

"GET BACK HERE!" It sounded furious, a rage that shook the air, but further away.

A branch whipped across his cheek, but he didn’t flinch. He ran faster, twisting through the towering trees, the stars shining a path for him.

It wasn’t until the sky was turning dark shades of purple that Peter fell against a tree, holding himself up with shaking, burning muscles and gasping for air. He couldn’t hear anything, but his neck was still stinging, his mind still telling him _danger_.

He wasn’t far enough away to stop, so, chest heaving, Peter pushed himself up and ran.

The cabin had been in a valley, he realised, because he was going uphill. It wasn’t steep, but maybe he could get a vantage point, find a road or a house or somewhere to hide.

_The sun was so warm and the breeze tugged at his wings as if even the wind was happy Icarus was finally free._

Peter thought back to _Icarus_ as the sun rose slowly over the horizon, painting the darkness with yellow and orange and red. He fell to his knees as he reached the peak of the hill, as the breeze chilled his skin and the sun warmed it, as he looked over the forest through half lidded eyes with sweat dripping off his nose and his muscles trembling with exhaustion.

He imagined wings on his back, could feel something hopeful flicker in his heart.

But then, as if the fates were laughing at him, his senses screeched and he only just had time to dodge a bullet to the leg.

The gunshot exploded in the air, and the bullet grazed against his thigh as he threw himself to the side and a scream escaped his throat. His ears rang and he jumped up, hand pressed against the wound as blood seeped through, eyes wildly searching.

He met David’s, just for a brief, frozen second.

And then he ran again, tripping downhill as his legs gave way. David was shouting his name, screaming bloody murder, and Peter clenched his teeth as he fell through brushes and over rocks, leg throbbing and chest aching, adrenaline rushing through his veins.

He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop as the blinding terror raced in his mind, and his foot got caught on a root and he tumbled down. It was a lot steeper, this side of the hill. Rocks bashed into him, branches scraping his skin open and bending his limbs.

At the bottom, the slowly lightening sky blurred above him. The world was too bright, and his eyes slid shut. He just wanted to sleep.

Except, his right leg was searing with pain. His right shoulder was so, so sore and his head pulsed with every racing heartbeat or short breath.

Peter forced his eyes open. He laid very still for a few moments, let the sounds of the forest fill his mind. Sluggishly, he felt around his sweatpants’ pockets. There were two small screws, a clock hand, a chunky mobile phone. He grabbed the phone, turned it around in his fingers.

His heart jumped.

Peter bit his tongue as he stood up, squeezed his eyes shut and held on tight to a tree as a moan escaped his throat when he jolted his leg.

The forest swam around him, still dark as the sun started to rise, but he could see something in the distance, the outline of dark building. Maybe a house.

He had to limp with the phone tight in his hand, and when he made it to the building, his heart sunk, just a bit. It was a barn, aged and falling apart, abandoned for years. Surrounding the barn was a field, just dry grass and gravel and skid marks from long gone cars engraved in the ground.

Peter pressed his hand against the old wood as he stumbled to the front, barely making it inside before he collapsed on the hay-sprinkled floor.

He wanted to close his eyes, to stop his aching body from hurting so much, to make the exhaustion slip away. Urgency floated in the air, though, screaming at him to get Tony. He could get Tony.

He dragged himself to the wall, hidden away from the outside, and dialled the number.

It didn’t even ring once before he answered. " _Peter?_ "

His brain was fuzzy, but it finally understood. He had gotten away. He had gotten out.

"Mister Stark?" He could barely understand himself, his words all garbled and mixed with exhaustion and tears.

" _Peter? Hey — Hey, kiddo. Can — Can you stay on the line? Don’t hang up, okay?_ " He had never heard Tony sound so desperate. " _Please, please stay. I can’t — Please, Petey, just _—_ don’t go._"

Peter swallowed a lump in his throat. "Mister Stark?"

He might have heard Tony choke on a breath, but he wasn’t sure. " _Are you hurt? What’s happening, kid? Talk to me._ "

"I…" Peter put his head on his knees as his face scrunched up, chest stuttering. "I got out, Mister Stark. I — Can you come get me? I really — I want —"

" _You got out?_ " Tony had never sounded like that, either. " _God — You got out, Pete? Fuck, okay, I’m tracking you now. I’m gonna find you real soon, okay? I just gotta break through and I’ll be there. Keep talking, kiddo._ "

His neck was prickling, his heart thumping against his ribs. "Mister Stark?"

" _I’m here, kid. It’s okay, you’re okay._ "

David was going to find him. David was close and he was going to hurt him and chain him to the bed and cut him open.

Tony made a noise, relieved and hysterical. " _I found you. I found you, Pete. Ten seconds and I’ll be there. You’re okay._ "

A branch snapped in the tree line, and Peter tensed, breathing hard, head snapping up. "He’s gonna find me. He’s gonna — I can’t — Mister Stark —"

But then he heard repulsers, cracking in the air and coming closer.

" _Petey, I’m here. I’m here, you’re safe, I got you —_ "

Peter pulled himself up, rushed to the barn doorway. Tony had landed by the time he got around the corner, suit dissolving into the housing unit on his chest, only meters away.

Their eyes met, and Tony’s were brimming with tears. "Peter."

Peter started running towards him, something racing through him that felt like relief and pain and love, all so intense that he couldn’t even think.

Time slowed down; a breeze of wind brushed against the treetops, a gleam of early morning sunlight hit his eyes, a twig snapped right beside him. He saw Tony’s face morph into shock and panic, felt his senses scream and his body get tugged backwards, greedy hands trapping him and the barrel of a gun pressed against his forehead.

"Try _anything_ and he gets it, Stark," David snarled, arm around Peter’s neck, holding him back.

Repulsive was the only word Peter could clearly describe David as. He was too possessive, too greedy and gross with his hot, sticky breath and his sweaty skin and his glassy eyes.

Peter grasped weakly at David, saw Tony’s panic start boiling into rage.

"Let him go." Tony was tensed, feet planted and reading to fight, calculating and furious.

"He isn’t yours." David stumbled back, pulling Peter with him, and the gun pushed tighter on his head. "He’s mine. Stay away from us."

Peter felt like he was falling from the sky, down into the freezing water and crashing waves.

Tony held up his hands, something scared leaking into his eyes. "He isn’t anyone’s. If you _care_ about him, then you’ll let him go."

David let out a laugh, harsh and bitter and insane. "You don’t get it. No one ever will. But Peter, he gets it. He’s mine."

It was almost like Peter was completely detached from his brain. Almost like he was watching the world through a glass screen.

"You can’t replace Josh." His mouth moved and his voice was quieter than the wind, but it cut through the dawn as if he were yelling. He couldn’t remember telling himself to speak. "He’s dead."

David stiffened. His arm encased Peter’s neck so tight that it made him gag, and Tony made a sound of protest, his body flinching, like he was forcing himself to stay still.

Peter locked eyes with him, an agreement passing through them. Almost unnoticeably, Tony nodded.

"Get away from us, Stark," David snapped, the gun hard against his temple. "You stay away and he doesn’t die."

Peter slammed his body back as hard as he could, pushed the gun away from his head and ripped himself from David’s grasp, stumbling forward.

A gunshot banged in the air, ringing in his ears, but Tony had already fired his repulsers, had already knocked David to the ground in a case of nanotech, unconscious.

The suit melted off him, into the arc reactor, and Tony’s hands shook. "Peter?"

When he fell into Tony’s arms, something snapped inside him. Sobs tore at his throat, ripped at his chest until he felt like he was coming apart at the seams. But Tony tangled a hand in his hair, pressed a rough kiss to his cheek, wrapped his arms around him so tight he could barely breathe, and somehow, it was holding him together.

"Mister Stark," he choked, a breathy whine, because he was tired and hurting and his world was blurring around him.

They sunk to the ground. Peter fisted Tony’s shirt, grabbed tighter and buried his head in his neck, let himself be gathered into Tony’s lap. He curled in closer, felt shaky, uneven breaths on his skin and realised that Tony was crying, too.

"You’re safe." Tony pressed his lips against Peter’s forehead, mumbled into his hair. "You’re okay. I've got you, baby."

He felt fuzzy, like his brain was stuffed with cotton. Tony pulled away slightly and Peter whimpered, because Tony could leave him, he didn’t want Tony to go away.

But he cupped Peter’s face in his calloused, scarred hands, gently dragged a thumb over his cheek and wiped away the tears still spilling over his eyes.

"Are you — Are you hurt, Pete?" He asked, voice shaking. He studied Peter, his own eyes flickering over his face desperately, as if trying to memorise every millimetre.

Peter didn’t answer, just tipped forward until his head hit Tony’s shoulder and another sob ripped his throat.

"Okay," Tony whispered. "It’s okay. You’re okay."

It could have been forever. The sun could have risen and set a thousand times and Peter would have had no way of knowing, wouldn’t have cared at all. The noise of far away sirens echoed in the air, but he didn’t move, didn’t loosen his grip on Tony's shirt. The world trickled away until it was nothing but fingers running through his curls, carefully moving around a throbbing bruise, and a soft, steady breath on his forehead, chapped lips pressed against his skin with the chilly morning air surrounding him.

"Can you stay awake for me?" Sirens were getting louder, accompanied with the scratch of tires on a dirt road. "Don’t fall asleep yet, kid."

Peter blinked lazily, his vision mostly blocked by Tony’s shoulder. He shifted slightly and looked up at the sky and saw colours mixing together — purple and pink and orange. And then he met Tony’s gaze, who was looking down at him with his warm, brown eyes, filled with so much _love_ that he sucked in a shallow breath.

"Tony?"

Tony’s eyes were wet and the colour underneath them matched the deep purples in the sky. "I’m here, kid."

Flashing lights were breaking the still air, tires scraping on gravel; police cars blazing red and blue, and black tinted ones screeching to a stop. There was too much — too much noise filling up his brain and too many lights, too many people slamming doors and shouting and running, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

"Hey, hey." Tony brushed his hair back. "Eyes on me, Underoos. It’s okay. They’re here to help."

"What…" It felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. Everything was happening too fast. People were racing around, pointing and shouting and running over, and he didn’t want them to. He didn’t want anyone else near him, and Peter buried his head in Tony’s neck, tried to block them out, make them disappear.

He felt Tony hold up a hand briefly, and then felt it start carding through his hair. He must have made them go away, because everything got a bit quieter. The footsteps stopped coming towards them, and the chaos felt further away.

There was still one set of footsteps walking over, crunching on the gravel and moving slowly, cautiously. Peter grabbed the front of Tony’s shirt, curled closer.

"I’ve got you," Tony soothed, speaking softly. Someone was in front of them, crouching down and waiting.

“Is he injured?” The voice that spoke was cool, and Peter recognised it from somewhere.

“Yeah,” Tony said. He moved his arms around Peter until he could click something on his wrist.

Peter saw red hair and kind eyes looking back at him when he tilted his head forwards. Behind her, metres away, people stood over David; police and people holding guns. The nanotech metal that surrounded him, trapped him, melted off.

"No — What are you —" He scrambled back, out of Tony’s arms, trying to get away.

David was pulled by his shoulders, hands cuffed behind his back. He looked disorientated, even from a distance, but his head was craning from side to side. He spotted Peter. Struggled and snarled, soundless shouts falling from his mouth.

Peter was floating away, terror overtaking him, glass sliding in front of his eyes and the world focusing onto nothing but the man’s icy glare.

There was a hand on his face, words drifting in the air, a body in front of him, blocking his view.

It didn’t matter. David’s glassy eyes would be burned into his head for eternity.

"Come on, Pete. Look at me, kid."

His thigh was burning. His head throbbed and his ribs were screaming with every short, empty breath.

"Peter." He blinked and saw a shoulder. When he looked up, Tony was kneeling in front of him. "That’s it — eyes on me."

He tried to speak, to say something that might unwind the sharp knot of panic in his chest, but all that left his mouth was a whoosh of air and a small, frightened sound. He sounded like a child. He felt like one.

"He’s gone, kid." Tony spoke softly. He used his free hand to loosely grab one of Peter’s, loose enough that Peter could flinch away if he needed to. He didn’t. "They’re taking him into custody. He’s gone."

Peter thought about the bullet wound on his leg, about the bruises and the cuts. About the fear that he didn’t think would ever, ever leave him.

"I can’t…" Around them, some officers were talking, some taking notes, some pretending not to watch and milling around, as if waiting. A woman — Natasha Romanoff, Peter thought blankly — was keeping them back with a cold glare; arms crossed as she held a phone to her ear. There was a police car driving away, sirens on as it faded into the distance. "Mister Stark?"

Tony squeezed his hand, brushed a curl back from his face. "What about we get you checked out?"

The words took a few seconds to drift into his ears. When they did, he nodded slightly and licked his cracked lips. His throat was dry.

Tony turned and signalled to a girl — a paramedic — hovering a few metres away. There was another person behind her; a man, who bustled around in a bright ambulance.

"Hi, Peter," she said as she crouched in front of him, voice gentle and bright. "My name’s Sal."

She had a bag on her back and Peter watched her, held Tony’s hand tighter.

"I’m just going to check you out for a little bit —" She sat on her knees, sliding the bag off her arm and onto the ground —"And then we’re gonna take you to Mister Stark’s medical wing. Is that okay?"

He looked at Tony, who gave him a small, encouraging smile, and he nodded slowly.

"Alright," she said. "First up, I’m just going to check for a concussion. Has your head been hit in the last few hours?"

Peter swallowed and folded his knees closer to his chest. His leg stung with the movement, but he didn’t care. "I… I fell — down a hill."

She nodded, not questioning, but Tony stiffened.

"And is anywhere hurting in particular?" She asked, grabbed something from her bag. It was a flashlight, and when she switched it on, he flinched back.

It was a flashlight. He was safe. She wasn’t going to hurt him.

“Is it okay if I shine this in your eyes?” It should have been okay — it was just a flashlight. But that was how David started. It was one of the first things David had done to him.

Tony’s thumb started moving back and forth on his hand. Peter stared at it for a moment, before blinking and nodding again, forcing himself to stay still. It was over in less than five seconds.

“A bullet almost — I got grazed,” Peter whispered.

He moved slightly, twisted his leg so she could see the rip in his black sweatpants, the blood almost camouflaged into the material. Her fingers hovered over the wound, her eyebrows knitted together.

"Let’s go over to the ambulance," she decided, swinging the bag over her shoulder.

Tony let go of his hand, gently wrapped an arm around his waist. "Up we get, kiddo."

When he stood, he collapsed back into Tony’s chest; his limbs were weaker than he thought, and a wave of dizziness rushed through him. The paramedic loosely grabbed his arm, and Tony’s gripped tightened, taking his weight.

"Easy, kid," he murmured.

They helped him limp forward, and Sal stepped up into the ambulance, holding out a hand to help him up.

Against the side of the wall, there was a bed. It was thin, with plastic rails on the ends — perfect for locking handcuffs to, for trapping him and cutting him open, staring down at him with glassy, icy eyes.

"Pete, hey — woah, kiddo, it’s okay."

His wrist were being held by Tony, his feet clumsily stumbling back, his breaths too quick. "No — I can’t — You don’t get it —"

"That’s fine," Tony interrupted. "We do this at your pace, kid. Tell me if you can’t do something and we’ll try something else."

Peter blinked. His head throbbed. His leg burnt, and his ribs ached. He didn’t feel very real, almost like he was watching a TV show unravel before him.

"What about sitting on the edge?" Tony carefully sat down on the edge of the ambulance, and Peter’s body followed, completely instinctively.

And then the medics started prodding him, looking at his scratches and bruises and cuts, asking him questions that he could barely feel himself answer, and his brain was blank and empty and nothing was _real_.

"He’s in shock," he might have heard as a blanket settled around his shoulders. "We can treat it better in hospital, and we’ll need to do some general test. There’s nothing life-threatening."

Peter looked down, and maybe minutes or hours or days had passed, because no one was in the ambulance except for him and Tony.

Tony was holding his hands in a delicate grip, cleaning the blood and dirt off with a wipe.

"Come back to me, kid," he said, and Peter met his eyes; they were shining and warm and real. "That’s it."

Peter felt the scars on Tony’s skin as he squeezed the back of his neck. He leaned in, head falling onto Tony’s shoulder. The arc reactor glowed from underneath his shirt, and Peter traced his fingers on it, felt the hard edges and cotton.

"I’ve got you," was muttered into his hair, and his eyes slipped shut.

 

—

 

" _Yes, Jamie, that’s right._ " On the screen, the news reporter stood at the gates of the Avengers Compound. Other reporters flickered in and out of frame, and the morning air was visibly buzzing with anticipation. " _Just moments ago, an ambulance surrounded by security drove in, and we can only guess that the rumours of Peter Parker’s rescue are true._ "

Off screen, another person spoke, " _And have any offical statements been released yet, Sam?_ "

Sam held a finger to his earpiece as he waited for the question to come through. " _Ah, no — no offical statements yet. We’re waiting, though, and expecting either Stark or the police to make one soon._ "

" _Looking forward to it, Sam._ "

 

—

 

When he woke, his world had shifted colours. It seemed like everything was slightly misplaced from what he was used to. The temperature was different, the texture of the sheets, with the smell of antiseptic and medicine floating in the air.

He shifted his head slightly to the side, but didn't open his eyes. To his right, someone was speaking, but it sounded muffled, like they were in another room. To his left, there was a steady, slow thud of somebody's heartbeat.

Peter stiffened, trying to make out who it was in the darkness. He strained his ears, listened to their long, heavy breaths.

They moved, their clothes crinkling and whatever they were sitting on creaking, and Peter forced his face to relax and the tension out of his muscles and his own breathing to even out, even with the pounding in his chest.

A hand hovered just over his skin. Peter could feel their presence over him, and if David thought he was awake, if David thought he was doing something wrong, if David was waking him up — Peter couldn't handle another day. He couldn't take it —

"Kiddo," a warm voice said softly, gruff with exhaustion. "You know I've always been able to tell when you're faking sleep."

Peter flinched and sat up, eyes wide. An arc reactor glowed a dim, blue light from underneath a shirt, illuminating Tony's face. The way it shadowed him made the colours under his eyes stand out, highlighted the paleness of his skin and the tiniest specks of grey sprinkling his hair.

"Hey," Tony whispered. The lines on his forehead seemed to smooth out when he spoke.

"Hi," Peter whispered back.

Tony carefully sat on the bed, against the headboard, but Peter stayed where he was, watching. There was a clock somewhere in the room, ticking and ticking and ticking. A small gleam of light was creeping around the edges of the curtains, but it barely made a dent in the darkness; the glow of the arc reactor, however, cut through it.

He was in a hospital room.

"How long have I..." Peter trailed off, looking back to Tony.

"About a day," he said. He was holding his wrist in his right hand. "There was — something in your system that we had to flush out. It was messing with your healing."

Light was creeping underneath the doorway, he realised. The murmuring on the other side of the door was somehow comforting.

"And you were exhausted, Pete. Must have run about ten miles."

His brain clicked in the same way it did when he figured out a difficult equation. "You found the cabin?"

Tony hadn't looked away from him at all, but then he did, eyes drifting to the floor, before snapping right back up. "Yeah, they did."

A thrum of anxiety ran through him, but he wasn't really sure why. Everything swirled around him dizzyingly. Only Tony's gentle hand on his shoulder made him blink and turn and shuffle so he was sitting next to him.

"Anything hurt?" Their shoulders touched, and Peter shook his head. He could feel Tony still watching him.

Peter pulled his knees up and ran a finger over where the bullet graze had been. There was nothing underneath the cotton of the hospital pants, but it felt tender and raw.

"Mister Stark?" He wanted to keep the numb bliss that his mind had settled into. His thoughts were fleeting and he was warm and safe in the comfortable quiet. But, like waves against a dam wall, emotions were smashing against his head and his heart, hard enough to make him exhale shakily and his muscles shake.

"Yeah, kid?"

He wasn't sure how people became a manifestation of home. Of how being with some people just ensured safety, no matter the situation. "I really missed you."

Tony didn't miss a beat. He just let our a huff of air and wrapped his arm around Peter's shoulders and tipped his head into Peter's hair. "I missed you too."

He squeezed his eyes shut, held back the flood that was threatening to overtake his entire body.

The door opened, and May was there, light spilling out behind her and sliding a phone back into her pocket, biting her lip. The world clicked back into place.

She said his name, rushed over and held him in her gentle fingers, stroked his hair and stilled his shaking hands with her own.

She kept saying his name, as though if she stopped saying it he would disappear.

When May pressed their foreheads together, her breath tickled his skin, and he gripped her arms, let his eyelids flutter shut and pressed his face into the soft hand cupping his face.

"I’m okay," he murmured. Maybe it wasn’t true, but he needed her to think he was, needed her to not worry.

"I know," she breathed, and she knew he wasn’t; she could read him better than anyone in the world. It was a code they had, unspoken words that said they were there for each other, that they’d be okay eventually, that they weren’t alone, no matter what had happened. "I know, baby."

There was a hand on his back, soft and steady, and he fell into May’s arms, surrounded by the people he loved the most.

 

—

 

They told him early the next day. He was still in the medical facility, laying in the bed and watching the grey clouds sink lower in the morning sky.

He didn’t feel quite there, like part of his mind still hadn’t caught up, like it was lagging behind. There was something lurking and twisting through his brain, whispering that he would wake up to David gently shaking him, with the light spilling in from the hallway.

May and Tony had told him they were getting him something to drink, and he should have thought something of it, because they hadn’t left him since he woke up, not once. But he couldn’t get his brain to think properly, and all he knew was that he missed them.

Peter watched as a drop of rain slid down the window, a finger running over the raised skin on the inside of his arm. It was fading, slowly, and the doctor had said that once he started eating properly, his healing factor would kick back in. He didn’t care, much.

His muscles shook slightly when he pushed himself up and trudged to the connecting bathroom. The lights turned on automatically, and when he saw himself in the mirror, he blinked.

Pale skin and exhausted eyes stared back at him. His cheekbones were jutting out, the oversized shirt he wore swallowing his small frame. There was something haunted lurking and weaving itself behind his gaze.

He lifted his shirt. There were scars. Some were white and glossy, some red and raised and sore. The scattered his torso, spread around his too sharp ribs. Bruises were faded yellow, making him look sick.

Peter slowly stepped back and looked down, away from the stranger looking back at him.

The bed creaked when he collapsed back onto it, and his pulled the covers around him, curled his knees into his chest and tried not to think. He trialed a finger along his collar bone, down his sternum. Everything felt too sharp and his skin was stretched too tight.

“Pete?” Tony’s voice called from doorway, and he tilted his head up to watch him and May walk around to him.

May sat on the bed, squeezing his shoulder briefly, and Tony placed a cup of green tea on the bedside table and pulled up a chair, biting his lip.

Peter wrapped the blankets around him tighter when they both glanced at each other, a silent conversation passing between them. "What is it?"

"We know you’re still processing things, baby," May said, looking down at him. Her eyebrows were knitted together, and she was twisting her wedding ring around her finger. "And you shouldn’t have to be thinking about anything other than recovering, but…"

"But, you deserve to know what’s going on," Tony finished, hesitantly.

Peter swallowed, felt a sharp knot in his chest as his heart started thudding. Maybe it was about pressing charges, he thought, or maybe about the court date.

He reached out and grabbed Tony’s hand, pulled it close and started pulling on a loose thread on the sleeve of his shirt. "Tell me," he said quietly.

The rain started pattering on the window faster and faster, and the silence matched the heavy clouds.

Tony and May shared another glance, and May spoke up, her voice gentle and lulling. "They found Taylor in his cell last night. He — He killed himself."

The blankness in his mind expanded for a few moments, washing everything away. He picked at the loose thread on Tony’s sleeve.

And then his eyebrows furrowed and he swallowed past something in his throat.

"He’s dead." Peter’s voice wobbled.

Tony was watching him closely, and he twisted the thread around his finger, not seeing it through his suddenly blurring eyes.

"What’s going on, kid?" Tony murmured, tilting his head.

"I don’t —" Peter sucked in a breath. Relief was spreading through his blood, because he never had to see David again. He never had to shiver under icy eyes or rough hands, never had to tug against the cuffs and plead for the pain to stop. He didn’t have to face him in court or tell the world about the weeks of his skin being sliced open and the foggy haze that his mind was forced into.

But he thought about the _others_. He thought about the ones before him that weren’t so lucky, about what David must have put them through, about how they died scared and cold and alone. He thought about his throat hurting from his screams and the sickening feeling in his gut as his skin was traced, about how raw and exposed those glassy eyes had left him feeing.

David didn’t have to face any of his crimes. He didn’t have to wither under the harsh gaze of all those he had taken away from, didn’t have to live with himself.

Peter felt bitterness gnaw at his bones, felt anger rush through him in harsh sobs that closed up his chest and pushed tears from his eyes.

"Shh," Tony soothed.

May shifted behind him, running her hands through his hair, bending down and pressing kisses on his head. "I know, sweetheart. It’s okay."

It wasn’t. David had cut a chunk out of Peter that he wasn’t sure he would ever get back. And he was just gone. To become nothing more than a trauma that only Peter would remember, to be forgotten by everyone but him.

David didn’t have to give closure to countless families. He didn’t have to earn forgiveness or apologise. He was dead.

"I know, baby," May said.

He turned his head into his pillow, face scrunching up, breath hitching. There was something pointy prodding his heart, trying to make it burst, and he grabbed Tony’s hand, pulled it to his chest like it could stop the ache.

For a few minutes, the world shrunk back down into a room. It wasn’t scary, this time, because Tony was squeezing his hand and May was curled up behind him, whispering that he was safe, that they were right there, that they weren’t leaving.

When his tears had dried and his eyes were bruised and red, he slowly sat up. Tony handed him his tea and it was almost too cold. He couldn’t drink it, he realised, because it would run down his throat, sweet and thick with honey, and there was a stupid, panicked thought that there was something else in it, that it would make his vision fuzzy and his senses dim.

May’s hand was warm as she rubbed it up and down his skin. He shivered, anyway, and pressed his head against his knees, wishing for the numbness to come back.

 

—

 

" _Mister Stark, can you clarify the reports that Taylor was connected to the kidnapping and murder of at least seven other boys?_ "

Peter bit his lip, watching the television as the livestream played.

" _I’m not at liberty to say,_ " Tony said, pushing his glasses up. He sat back in his chair, wordlessly motioning for the agent next to him to speak.

" _At this time, we can confidentially say that Taylor is linked to the kidnapping of seven boys, all aged fourteen to seventeen_." The agent clasped her hands together and set her jaw. Beside him, May tipped her head onto the top of Peter’s. " _This includes Peter Parker’s capture, and we believe they’ve taken place since two-thousand and ten._ "

When Tony had told him that earlier, it hadn’t been surprising.

"So, you’re Tony’s favourite spider." A voice came from the doorway, and Peter jumped, turning to see who had spoken. Natasha Romanoff was leaning against the frame, arms crossed and a small smile on her face.

"Hi, Natasha," May said, and the Black Widow pushed off the wall and sat on the desk by the door. She looked completely at ease, confident and curious.

"Hey, May. Peter." Her voice was cool and gentle, managing to convey that she wasn’t a threat in just a few words. He had a feeling that she could make someone just as scared of her in fewer. "It’s nice to meet you, officially."

The fanboy in Peter exploded, just a bit, and he swallowed and blinked, trying to make his mouth move. "It’s, uh, nice to — nice to meet you too, Miss Romanoff."

She raised an eyebrow. "I can see why Stark likes you so much. Call me Natasha."

Peter ran a hand through his hair, eyes briefly flickering to the TV.

" _Peter will make a public appearance when — and if — he feels comfortable doing so,_ " Tony was growling. Something in Peter’s chest warmed.

"May and Mister Stark told me how much you helped," he said quietly.

Natasha shrugged. "Tony did most of the work. I just did the interrogating. And you got yourself out, kid."

"Still — thank you," Peter said. He said it so sincerely, and he met her eyes, held her gaze until her smile grew, just a bit, and her face softened.

"Well, what can I say?" She asked, voice light and teasing, mouth turning into a smirk. "Tony gets pretty unbearable when he loses something important to him."

A tiny smile tugged on Peter’s lips, and he looked down shyly.

 

—

 

Getting back to normalcy was always going to be hard. He had a therapy appointment booked in for Friday, was starting to bring up to Tony and May that he should go back to school soon. Though they didn’t say it, they disagreed; he could see the worry in their eyes, in the way they couldn’t seem to stop looking at him whenever he was in the room, as if reminding themselves that he was still there.

Peter didn’t even think he was ready for school, didn’t think he could handle being stared at and whispered about, not yet. He had only been out of the medical wing for a day, anyway, and he had time.

He could hear Tony bustling around in the kitchen, had been for the last hour, and Peter stretched his arms over his head and winced at the slight stab of pain down his ribs, before he rolled out of bed and trudged down the hallway.

The smell didn’t reach him until he had turned into the kitchen. He was tired and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and when he breathed in, suddenly it was there, filling up his nose and making his stomach churn.

The smell of scrambled eggs and bacon was, almost hilariously, enough to send him straight back to the log cabin with boarded up windows and an insane man slicing him up.

Peter gagged, doubled over and clawed at his throat, because it was dripping down, clogging his bloodstream, and David was there, staring him down and chaining him up and cutting him open.

He couldn’t breathe, could’t think. He was trapped. David was going to peel his skin away, was going to watch him bleed to death with glassy blue eyes, and hands were on him, pulling him and dragging him, meaningless words drifting in the air, and acid was crawling up his throat, burning it.

His knees collapsed against cold, hard tile, and he curled over a toilet as he threw up.

"It’s alright, kiddo, let it all out."

He didn’t want David there, he didn’t want hands tracing his body and an icy gaze staring right through him, didn’t want the nauseating smell sticking in the air, making it heavy, making him heave up acid again.

"C’mon, breathe, Petey," someone said, and they must have been able to read his mind, because the hands left his skin. "Just breathe."

Peter couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t. He was back in the freezing garage, back in the rusting cabin, and he was going to die there, he was never going to see Tony or May or Ned or _anyone_ ever again.

"Can you look at me, kid? It’s just me, it’s Tony."

It was instinctual, to listen to the voice. When he looked up, through his stinging tears and his burning lungs, Tony was there, hovering beside him anxiously, protecting him.

"Make it _stop._ " Peter choked on his words, fell into Tony as he gasped for breath. He didn’t know what he was pleading for; maybe for the putrid smell — now mixed with acid and bleach — to disappear, maybe for the terror engraved in his heart to loosen, maybe for the overwhelming thoughts that made him dizzy to stop.

Tony held him close for a moment, tangled his hands in Peter’s hair. Peter gasped in a short breath, breathed in motor oil and coffee and cologne.

And then he was gently being tugged up, collapsing against Tony’s chest and being moved out of the bathroom. It was so much worse, so much stronger, and he whined, tried to pull away.

"It’s okay, baby," Tony promised, and he sounded pained as he held Peter tighter. "Almost there."

Peter didn’t care; it was too much, his lungs weren’t working, air was sticking in them, not moving. He couldn’t breathe.

But then he could.

Cold, clean, fresh air raced through him. He sucked it in desperately, slid down the glass with Tony still holding him.

He was okay.

A breeze grazed past him, and his eyes fluttered shut as he tilted his head up to the sky, let the sun warm his skin.

It took a long time for him to be able to do anything else. Tony ran his fingers through Peter’s hair, working through the knots, and for a while, they just breathed.

Peter dropped his head onto Tony’s shoulder, buried his head in his neck. Tony held him tighter, pressed a rough kiss into his curls.

"I love you, kid," he said. His voice was hoarse and quiet, and the feeling that spread through Peter’s chest was warmer than the sun.

"I love you, too," Peter whispered, and he wondered why they had never said it before. It had been true for a long time. "Hey, Mister Stark?"

"Yeah, Pete?"

Peter traced the arc reactor under Tony’s shirt with his finger with a small, tired smile. "Can we not have eggs for breakfast? For, like — a while, maybe?"

Tony laughed. It was wet and heavy, but when Peter tilted his head up, Tony’s eyes were warm and happy and felt exactly like home. "Consider them gone."

He focused on the sun again, on the wind brushing his face, and knew how Icarus felt when he flied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nobody:
> 
> me, ranting about my ending: ok so ive been worrying about how i was gonna end this for w e e k s and i was tossing up with the idea of killing david off ,,, and i decided to do it cause of 2 reasons
> 
> 1 ,,, i do NOT posses the skill to write a whole ass court case, cause i knew that if i didn't kill him, then my brain would literally force me to study like fucking legal 1 / 2 and 3 / 4 just to do it properly,,, so ,,, 
> 
> (if you do wanna read an amazing story about where peter was kidnapped and the following court case after, then i *highly* recommend 'Pause' by losingmymindtonight  
> like that whole series is just so freaking amazing and i can't recommend it enough )
> 
> 2 ,,, honestly David was such an unhinged , crazy dude. after loosing his son , and then with the implied other kids that he kidnapped and killed , he's even crazier. and then he finds peter, who had the whole mutant thing that his son died from, and he's just *oH woO sO perFecT leT'S kidNaP aNd toRtUre hiM* 
> 
> but then he loses peter, too, and he just ,, cracks, and everything catches up with him and he just wants to be with his actual son. like he was so convinced that peter would work out and he could have his son back but then Peter escapes.
> 
> yikes ok im done lol  
> \--
> 
> thANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING THIS CLUSTERFUCK OF 3 AM WRITING AND MINIMAL EDITING  
> u all mean so much to me, and thank u all so much for sticking with this and giving my writing a chance:) ily

**Author's Note:**

> ok first i got a tumblr !! -- https://www.tumblr.com/blog/legalassie , so come send in prompts or talk to me or whatever there if you want !
> 
> oh boy am i scared to post this though lol  
> i think i'm pretty proud of it and i'm really excited to be finally posting and show you guys , cause i've been working on it for weeks but yeah
> 
> *also* the title and the chapter names are from the song Oh! Darling by the Beatles , which was basically the whole inspiration for the story lol
> 
> so, thank you guys sm for reading and i hope you enjoy it !


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